Their rifle-toting overseer (a glowering Nick Cassavetes, sporting a very shaky Deep South accent) may act tough, but within the grounds he tolerates a loose atmosphere that embraces conjugal visits, open homosexuality and quite a bit of horsing around by an idiosyncratic bunch of inmates. In the Depression-era Mississippi depicted here, this means confinement, not behind bars, but on a camp-like compound that doesn’t even have fences, just guards who shoot to kill if a prisoner steps beyond the “gun line.” Unshackled convicts work on rural digging and construction projects, in effect doing the work of slaves and living rather like them as well. When the venal local sheriff then nails them for the murder of a man he himself has killed, the two men are sentenced - a half-hour into the story - to life in prison. To pay off a debt to a bootlegger (funkmeister Rick James, very dapper), the New Yorkers drive south to pick up a load of moonshine, but the lads lose all their cash thanks to their weaknesses for gambling (Ray) and women (Claude). Result falls well short of a thoroughly dimensional portrait of the setting or characters, but is entertaining nonetheless.īookended by a contempo burial scene in which an old-timer (Obba Babatunde) relates the story of the two lifers to the young gravediggers at a prison cemetery, yarn jumps back to 1932 Harlem, where fast-talking hustler Ray Gibson (Murphy) picks the wrong guy, straightlaced but penniless aspiring bank teller Claude Banks (Lawrence), to pickpocket at a swank nightclub. And while bluntly presenting institutionalized racism as a fact of Southern life, it’s also mostly content with a surface treatment of sociopolitical as well as personal relationships. While the edited version delivers the plot well enough, you'll laugh along with the theatrical version much more.Idea for the film was Murphy’s own, and the recruited screenwriting team of Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone have come up with something considerably better than their debut, the dismal “Destiny Turns on the Radio.” Though lively, packed with colorful characters and spiked with outbursts of outrageous banter, script has a flat, episodic quality that negates much momentum. I was prompted to write this review having just seen it uncut for the first time. Watch this movie please, and if you've seen it watch it again. Lee Ermey as the racist bad guy was genius too. I've been repeating Bernie Mac's lines and the "cornbread" scene for years. The rest of the cast is as underappreciated as this movie is in general. Their love-hate "old married couple" bickering will leave you in stitches. They don't do that so much here, but these guys age from mid-20s to 90s convincingly. Murphy with the Nutty Professor characters, demonstrates serious acting ability while creating laughs. While on the surface, Claude and Ray are sentenced to life in prison for a crime they didn't commit, the real story here is about life-the ups and downs, the choices you make, and the friends you sometimes can't stand but ultimately depend upon along the way.īoth Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence became known for, along with being very funny, the characters they create. It certainly is no serious take on a subject that would be all-too serious elsewhere, but the double entendre of the title belies the reason, besides all the talent present, why this film works so well. If you go to the movies to be entertained, it doesn't get much better than this.
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