Life (film)

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Life
The DVD cover for the movie Life.
Directed by	Ted Demme
Produced by	James D. Brubaker, Karen Kehela, Eddie Murphy, Brian Grazer
Written by	Robert Ramsey Matthew Stone
Starring	Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence
Music by	R. Kelly,Wyclef Jean
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	April 13, 1999
Running time	108 min.
Language	English
Budget	$75,000,000 (estimated)
IMDb profile

Life (1999) is a dramedy starring Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence. The film was directed by Ted Demme. Others in the cast include Bernie Mac, Anthony Anderson, Miguel A. Núñez Jr. and Bokeem Woodbine.

The film was released in April of 1999 and went on to gross over sixty million dollars at the box office. K-Ci & JoJo sang the theme to the movie, which was titled "Life", but it was the song "Fortunate" that garned the most attention from the soundtrack as it received several awards and nominations.

The film was shot at various locations in California. The locations include Locke, CA, Los Angeles, CA, Downey, CA, and Sacramento, CA. Parts of the film were actually shot at a Rockwell Defense Plant in California.

1 Synopsis
2 Cast
3 Awards & Nominations
4 Trivia
5 Soundtrack listing
6 External links

[edit] Synopsis

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. 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 moonshining 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. Badly beaten, the man happens to stumble back into Ray and Claude and they both are framed for murder. They go to trial, are convicted, and sentenced to life. True to the time period and the South, Ray and Claude are sent to a prison camp for murders to perform hard labor. They spend the next 65 years trying to escape from prison, making new friends: Willie Long (Obba Babatundé), 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 and Hoppin' Bob, and helping their own friendship grow.

Ray and Claude make several attempts to escape the prison. Early into their incarceration, they simply try running away in the middle of the night, eventually getting as far as Tallahatchie before being tracked down and sentenced to a week in the hole. In 1945 they meet a fellow 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 inmate Biscuit is killed around this time when he deliberately runs into a gun line and is shot. After they leave for Pittsburgh, Ray makes another escape plan but Claude wants no part of it. Claude starts wrapping himself around this concept: They were thrown in jail for life (meaning they'll die there). After the two argued, Ray and Claude ended their friendship. With them not talking, Camp 8 got a little harder and colder, and as the years passed, other inmates that were friends of Ray and Claude died off one by one.

Many years later, in 1972, Ray and Claude meet the sheriff who framed them forty years earlier. In the midst of a heated argument, the sheriff is shot and killed by the prison warden (Ned Beatty), who realizes they did not commit the crime they were imprisoned for. 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 the present day, Ray and Claude are now elderly, and living in the prison's infirmary. 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. Knowing he's still inside, Ray goes back in to find him, when the entrance caves in behind him.

Two bodies were found, but it was revealed that the event was planned by Ray and Claude. 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.

[edit] Cast

Character	Actor
Rayford Gibson	Eddie Murphy
Claude Banks	Martin Lawrence
Willie Long	Obba Babatundé
Sergeant Dillard	Nick Cassavetes
Cookie	Anthony Anderson
Jangle Leg	Bernie Mac
Biscuit	Miguel A. Núñez Jr.
Hoppin' Bob	Brent Jennings
Can't Get Right	Bokeem Woodbine
Radio	Guy Torry
Pokerface	Barry Shabaka Henley
Dexter Wilkins	Ned Beatty
Goldmouth	Michael Taliferro
Superintendent Abernathy	O'Neal Compton
Stan Blocker	Noah Emmerich
Spanky	Rick James
Older Sheriff Pike	R. Lee Ermey
Younger Sheriff Pike	Ned Vaughn
Winston Hancock	Clarence Williams III
Leon	Heavy D
Jake	Bonz Malone
Sylvia	Lisa Nicole Carson
Older Mae Rose	Poppy Montgomery

[edit] Awards & Nominations

Academy Award
- nominated for Best Makeup (2000)
NAACP Image Award
- nominated for Outstanding Motion Picture (2000)
BMI Film & TV Awards
- won for Most Performed Song from a Film (2000)
Blockbuster Entertainment Awards
- nominated with Eddie Murphy for Favorite Comedy Team (2000) for the movie
- nominated for Favorite Song from a Movie (Fortunate)

[edit] Trivia

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

In the scene where Ray is getting beaten in a fight with Goldmouth, Rayford says to Goldmouth: "I know a bitch named Della who hits harder than you." This is a reference to Harlem Nights (1989), in which Murphy's character is beat up in a fight with a madame played by Della Reese.^{[citation needed]}
Spanky's (Rick James) limp was not acting. The scene was shot after Rick James underwent hip replacement surgery.
In the scene where Ray and Claude are standing on a box of bottles, Claude mentions that one of his toes has slipped into one of them. This actually happened during the take, but Martin Lawrence kept going, despite Eddie Murphy's laughing, which is genuine.
This was Anthony Anderson's Second Role