Everybody Wins

Everybody Wins casts Nick Nolte as Tom O’Toole, a private investigator who agrees to look into a small-town murder after a mysterious woman (Debra Winger’s Angela Crispini) weasels her way into his life. Directed by Karel Reisz, Everybody Wins goes off the rails almost immediately – with Arthur Miller’s surprisingly incoherent screenplay certainly a key element in the film’s downfall. Miller’s stagy, impossibly stilted dialogue is exacerbated by his refusal/inability to offer up a single interesting figure, and the actors are consequently left floundering as they attempt to breathe some authenticity into their poorly-drawn characters. Nolte’s bland performance is Oscar-worthy compared to the histrionics offered up by Winger, although, to be fair, it’s tough to imagine any actress effectively stepping into the shoes of such an unreasonably over-the-top protagonist. That Miller has infused the proceedings with storyline that becomes increasingly convoluted and flat-out impossible to follow as the film progresses doesn’t help matters, and it’s ultimately difficult, to put it mildly, to label Everybody Wins as anything other than an unmitigated disaster.

* out of ****