Life (1999)
The film begins with an elderly disabled inmate named Willie Long (Obba Babatundé) at the burial of his two friends who have just recently died in a fire in the prison’s infirmary. He begins to tell two young men (Heavy D and Bonz Malone) who work at the prison their story:
Ray Gibson (Murphy) and Claude Banks (Lawrence) are two New Yorkers in 1932 from different worlds: Ray is a small-time hustler and Claude has just been accepted for a job as a bank teller, trying to make something of himself. They are both at a club called Spanky’s when Ray picks Claude as his mark to pick-pocket. Later they both end up in the bad graces of the club’s owner Spanky (Rick James). Ray is in trouble for running numbers on Spanky’s territory and Claude also since he was jacked by two men he owes money to, does not have any money to pay for the dinner he just ate at Spanky’s club. Ray arranges to have himself and Claude do some boot-legging in order to pay off both of their debts to Spanky.
They head down south from New York in order to buy a carload of Mississippi ‘hooch’ (alcohol). Unfortunately, before they can get back to New York, a man named Winston Hancock (Clarence Williams III) that swindles Ray in a card game is murdered outside of a juke joint by the town’s white sheriff, Warren Pike (Ned Vaughn). As Ray and Claude are walking outside talking about what happened in the club, Hancock is thrown onto Claude by a pulley of some sort. Some rednecks come up on them and realize Hancock is dead. They take Ray & Claude to the jail at gunpoint. A short time later, they go to trial, are convicted, and sentenced to life. True to the time period and the south, Ray and Claude are sent to an infamous prison camp called ‘Camp 8′ (now Mississippi State Penitentiary) for murder to perform hard labor. They spend the next 65 years trying to escape from prison, while making new friends: Biscuit (Miguel A. Núñez Jr.), Jangle Leg (Bernie Mac), Radio (Guy Torry), Goldmouth (Michael Taliferro), Cookie (Anthony Anderson) and Pokerface (Barry Shabaka Henley), dodging the guards Sergeant Dillard (Nick Cassavetes) and Hoppin’ Bob (Brent Jennings) as well as having their own friendship grow. Each inmate has their own different personality. Though Sgt. Dillard and Hoppin’ Bob are strict on them, they both have friendly “soft spots” for all of their inmates. Ray gets into a jam while defending Claude over a piece of cornbread that Goldmouth demands but Claude is being polite (unaware that he is taking advantage of him). Goldmouth gets angry when Ray keeps running his mouth and says that he’ll take his instead of Claude’s. Ray threatens that if he takes his cornbread it will be “consequences and reprecussions” (which leads to a fight and Goldmouth wins). After the fight, Ray and Goldmouth become friends.
Sometime later, one night, Ray explains his dream of having his own nightclub called “The Boom Boom Room”. The point of the club is just to have it in your imagination and it doesn’t have to be real. A dream sequence features Biscuit imagining himself as a female singer, Jangle Leg and Radio are in the band, Cookie is a hungry restaurant patron, Pokerface is a lucky gambler, Goldmouth is the guard at the door and Claude is a mistreated waiter. The sequence ends with Hoppin’ Bob as a cop who demands everyone to leave the club (but it was actually Hoppin’ Bob interrupting by telling the inmates to go to bed).
Ray and Claude make several attempts to escape the prison. Early in their incarceration, they simply try running away in the middle of the night, getting as far as Tallahatchie before being tracked down and sentenced to a week in the hole. Around 1944, during World War II, they meet a fellow mute inmate named ‘Can’t-Get-Right’ (Bokeem Woodbine) who happens to be an extremely proficient baseball player. He catches the eye of a Negro League scout who indicates he can get him out of prison to play baseball. Ray and Claude try to get the scout to put a word in for them as well (as they relate to ‘Can’t-Get-Right’ in that they can coax him best to play), but this eventually falls through and only ‘Can’t-Get-Right’ is released. The gay inmate Biscuit is killed around this time when he deliberately runs into a gun line and is shot a day before his release. His lover, Jangle Leg, never fully recovers from this. After ‘Can’t-Get-Right’ is released to play baseball in Pittsburgh, Ray makes another escape plan but Claude wants no part of it. Claude starts resigning himself to the fact that they’ll never get out (”They threw us in here for LIFE, Ray…we’re gonna die here!). This leads to an argument, which in turn leads to Ray and Claude ending their friendship. With them not talking, Camp 8 gets “a little harder and colder”, and as the years passed, all of the inmates who were friends of Ray, Claude and Willie died.
Many years later after a number of events occurring including the John F. Kennedy assassination, the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination, the Malcolm X assassination, the The African-American Civil Rights Movement, the Apollo 11 moon landings, and Muhammad Ali’s last win. In 1972, Ray, Claude and Willie are now older. Willie is too old and weak to walk and he is now in a wheelchair. Hoppin’ Bob died years ago and Sgt. Dillard still runs the camp, still annoying Ray and Claude. One day, Ray and Claude are sent over to live at the Superintendent Dexter Wilkins’ (Ned Beatty) Mansion to work for him. Upon their depature, Sgt. Dillard says “I, for one, won’t miss you” (although his emotional disposition would indicate otherwise.) Claude drives Superintendent Wilkins to pick up the new superintendent (R. Lee Ermey) who happens to be Sheriff Pike, the man who framed them 40 years earlier. In the midst of a heated argument over a watch that Pike stole that watch from Ray, Pike got shot and killed by Wilkins, who realizes they really WERE innocent. He tells Ray and Claude he intends to write pardon papers for the two of them, but dies of a heart attack before he’s able to do so.
In 1997, the present day, Ray and Claude are now elderly, and living in the (now-integrated) prison’s infirmary with Willie. They realize by now that the only way they’ll escape the prison is when they die. However, the infirmary catches fire, and everyone is able to get out except Claude. Willie tells Ray he’s still inside, Ray goes back in to find him, when the entrance caves in behind him, killing him.
In present day, Willie concludes the tale and the two workers are saddened by the story. But he reveals that the event was planned by Ray and Claude. The workers are still confused but Willie only rolls off (in his wheelchair) laughing and smoking a cigarette. The two bodies were taken from the morgue, and Ray and Claude had escaped the fire and prison by hiding on the departing fire trucks. The film ends with Ray and Claude (now living together in Harlem) at a New York Yankees baseball game. Doing what they always do: Argue.
Starring :
Eddie Murphy … Rayford Gibson
Martin Lawrence … Claude Banks
Obba Babatundé … Willie Long
Nick Cassavetes … Sergeant Dillard
Anthony Anderson … Cookie
Barry Shabaka Henley … Pokerface
Brent Jennings … Hoppin’ Bob
Bernie Mac … Jangle Leg
Miguel A. Núñez Jr. … Biscuit
Michael Taliferro … Goldmouth (as Michael ‘Bear’ Taliferro)
Guy Torry … Radio
Bokeem Woodbine … Can’t Get Right
Ned Beatty … Dexter Wilkins
Lisa Nicole Carson … Sylvia
O’Neal Compton … Superintendant Abernathy
Director :
Ted Demme