Nothing to Lose teams Lawrence, the original star of Def Comedy Jam and onetime proud owner of his own Fox show, with Tim Robbins, the star of Bull Durham and director of Dead Man Walking. So if nothing else, it will grab attention for the oddest grouping of talents since, well, last month, when Batman & Robin was released.
This is the kind of picture Disney would have cranked out five years ago, with Jim Belushi in one of the leads; perhaps someone has to be given credit for a cultural evolution of a sort. One of those fish-out-of-water contrivances that was virtually a Disney stock-in-trade a few years back, Nothing to Lose generates a kind of nostalgia for a period nobody really misses -- a time when Hollywood was into making films about comfortable suburbanites jostled from their sleepwalking existences. (Keep in mind, you probably don't know anyone who saw those Jim Belushi pictures -- Taking Care of Business, Mr. Destiny -- unless they caught them either on Showtime or in one of those simultaneous movie theater/airline releases.)
Nothing to Lose stars Robbins as Nick Beam, a guy who, after years of marriage, still coos sweetly to his shiny-eyed wife, Ann (Kelly Preston). On the way home from his pressure-free job at a Los Angeles ad agency, he stops to order one of the constant bouquets of flowers he buys for her -- only to arrive home and discover his wife in bed with his crass, self-absorbed boss (played by Michael McKean, Laverne and Shirley's Lenny). While driving aimlessly through the desert in the throes of a leviathan-size depression, he's carjacked by T. Paul (Lawrence), a nervous thug who seems to be waving a gun bigger than he is. But a frayed-to-the-bone Nick winds up kidnapping T. Paul, holding him hostage, and, finally, bringing him back to L.A. -- where, Nick hopes, they'll exact a little payback.
Robbins's high forehead and dimpled baby face are a con artist's dream, because they perpetually distract from his gifts as an actor; he's got a certain slyness about him -- there's always something furtive about him, some reserve that's banked. Even in a programmer such as this, he brings that sneakiness to bear, and he comes off as nothing so much as a suicidal spoiled brat whose appearance belies the fact that he simply doesn't care about himself anymore. Robbins's craftiness provides Lawrence a chance to deliver as a comic actor. He is likable simply because of his small man's bluster, talking up a challenge he's never quite up to. When the two of them, cranky and alienated from the world, gripe at each other, they're funnier than the picture has a right to be; they manage to create movie star chemistry that exceeds mere buddy-picture cliche.
To that end, Oliver Stone veteran John C. McGinley (playing Davis "Rig" Lanlow) and Spike Lee regular Giancarlo Esposito (as Charlie Dunt) turn up as fairly well-adjusted smalltime stickup men who act as mirror images of Lawrence and Robbins, and writer/director Steve Oedekerk (Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls) rather smartly uses them as the butt of a race-card joke involving mistaken identity. Oedekerk also scores during a scene in which Nick and T. Paul run into "Rig" and Charlie; "Rig" jams a gun into Nick's apple cheeks, and Nick leans into it, daring the thief to pull the trigger -- in fact, Nick seems to hope he will. It's a rare, chilling moment that makes you think you're at a real movie ... for a moment.
But mostly, Nothing to Lose settles for an easy sentimentality that lessens its few happy shocks. We learn T. Paul is only pulling stickup bids because he's a talented electronics whiz and devoted family man who can't get work; no one takes his correspondence-course degree seriously. I guess maybe we should give points to a movie that bothers to depict a loving home life for an African-American man, since they're about as rare as a month without Lawrence being brought up on a concealed-weapons charge. And maybe Nothing to Lose isn't without its laughs, but its small triumph -- that it's not nearly as annoying as you think it's going to be -- is hardly a victory.
Nothing to Lose.
Directed by Steve Oedekerk.
With Martin Lawrence, Tim Robbins, Giancarlo Esposito, John C. McGinley and Kelly Preston.
Rated R.
97 minutes.
