Everybody Wins ** (1990, Debra Winger, Nick Nolte, Will Patton) – Classic Movie Review 6633

Director Karel Reisz’s 1990 thriller Everybody Wins stars Nick Nolte as a private eye who is called to a peaceful New England town by a quirky, beguiling, perhaps unstable hooker (Debra Winger) to prove a teen in prison on a murder charge is innocent and therefore to investigate a web of corruption. A New England doctor has been murdered and his young nephew has been convicted.

In his first screenplay since 1961’s The Misfits, based on his own 1984 one-act play Some Kind of Love Story, distinguished playwright Arthur Miller follows the murder mystery while exploring the enigma of the woman’s character. That unfortunately turns out to be an impossible role for Winger to play.

The good cast and director make little headway in this artificial and disappointing film. And, sadly, nobody wins in Everybody Wins. It was Reisz’s final film before his death in 2002.

Everybody Wins is loosely inspired by a Seventies murder case in Canaan, Connecticut, the subject of director Tony Richardson’s TV movie A Death in Canaan (1978).

The cast are Nick Nolte as Tom O’Toole, Debra Winger as Angela Crispini, Will Patton as Jerry, Jack Warden as Judge Murdoch, Judith Ivey as Connie, Kathleen Wilhoite as Amy, Frank Converse as Charley Haggerty and James Parisi as reporter with Frank Military, Steven Skybell, Mary Louise Wilson, Mert Hatfield, Peter Appel, Sean Well, Timothy D Wright and Elizabeth Ann Klein.

Everybody Wins was shot by Ian Baker in Norwich, Connecticut, with a score by Mark Isham and music by Leon Redbone. It runs 97 minutes and is produced by Jeremy Thomas and Ezra Swerdlow.

It cost $19 million and grossed $1,372,000 in the US.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6633

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