Meandering, slow pace is how ‘Cookie’ crumbles

“Cookie’s Fortune.” Directed by Robert Altman. Written by Anne Rapp. Running time: 118 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for language, a brief scene of violence and mild adult content) Nightly, April 19-22, Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville.

The new Robert Altman film is called “Cookie’s Fortune,” which crumbles from time to time with a pace that’s every bit as slow and meandering as a pig pushing through mud in the heart of a Mississippi summer.

Still, there are its performances, its well-written script by Anne Rapp, and its unexpected, gemlike moments that lift this otherwise sleepy southern gothic to sufficient life.

The film stars Patricia Neal as Jewel Mae “Cookie” Orcutt, an elderly widow of Holly Springs, Miss., who misses her dead husband so much, she takes one of his guns, climbs the stairs to her bedroom, places a pillow over her face and ends her life with a well-placed bullet. But when her genteel, socially conscious niece Camille (Glenn Close) finds her body, the meddling woman fears a scandal. In a wild rush that bewilders her dim-witted sister Cora (Julianne Moore), Camille eats the suicide note, tosses the gun into the bushes outside and rearranges the room to make it look as if Cookie were murdered.

For Cookie’s friend Willis (Charles S. Dutton), Camille’s dirty deed spells trouble — Willis is detained for the murder. But for Altman fans, it’s a rich setup that proves an irresistable showcase for Altman’s strengths in character development and in weaving together the impossible interconnections within a community.

With Liv Tyler as Cora’s sweetly rebellious daughter, Emma, and Chris O’Donnell as Emma’s policeman suitor, “Cookie’s Fortune” is a Southern fried feast that may lack cinematic drive, but it features an ending that’s every bit as sly and as cunning as a one-eyed chicken hawk in a barn full of roosters. Grade: B

“Life.” Directed by Ted Demme. Written by Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated R (for strong language, adult content and violence).

In “Life,” two things are uncertain: Ted Demme’s direction and the film’s script, which isn’t sure if it wants to be a comedy, a drama, a melodrama or a film about racism in Mississippi during the 1930s.

The film never chooses, but it certainly reaches; throughout, there is a sense that Demme, who directed “The Ref” and co-produced “Rounders,” wanted more from this film, which is about two strangers framed for a murder they didn’t commit while hauling moonshine in the backwoods of Mississppi.

Sentenced to life in prison, Ray Gobson (Eddie Murphy), a smooth-talking Harlem hustler, and Claude Banks (Martin Lawrence), a responsible, uptight bank teller, spend the next 60 years fighting and squabbling — while a strong bond of friendship reluctantly grows between them.

As one would expect from the inspired pairing of Murphy and Lawrence, there are high moments of comedy here, but those moments come too infrequently to suit — and are always lodged between Demme’s light brand of social commentary.

“Life” does mirror life in that it isn’t what it seems — it’s not the bawdy comedy Universal Pictures wants you to believe it is in their bawdy ads, and that’s too bad. If its only aspiration was comedy, we could overlook Demme’s wrongful depiction of prison life for blacks in the South of the 1930s. According to this film, it was a cake walk, a country club of barbecues, baseball games, conjugal visits — and the occasional moment of hard labor tossed in to spark the action with a funny bit of dialogue.

But when Demme brings down the room with the unexpected suicide of a likeable charcater, or switches gears to seriously reflect upon the injustice done to Gibson and Banks because of the color of their skin, he’s asking audiences to consider something altogether different from comedy, which would have been fine had he only followed through with a few concrete answers.

As for Murphy and Lawrence, they are good here (the makeup that ages them is not), but the film’s script puts most of their talents on death row. It wants to give its stars opportunites to show their range as actors — when it should have been content to let them show their range as comedians.

That, in a jail cell, is the film’s true crime.

Grade: C+

Christopher Smith’s film reviews appear each Monday in the Bangor Daily News. Each week on WLBZ’s “News Center 5:30 Today” and “News Center Tonight,” he reviews current feature films (Tuesdays) and what’s new and worth renting at video stores (Thursdays).