Life (1999 film)
| Life | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Ted Demme |
| Produced by |
Brian Grazer Eddie Murphy |
| Screenplay by | Robert Ramsey Matthew Stone |
| Story by | Eddie Murphy |
| Starring |
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| Music by |
R. Kelly Wyclef Jean |
| Cinematography | Geoffrey Simpson |
| Edited by | Jeffrey Wolf |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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109 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $80 million |
| Box office | $73,345,029 |
Life is a 1999 American comedy-drama film written by Robert Ramsey & Matthew Stone and directed by Ted Demme. The film stars Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence. It is the second film that Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence have worked on, the first being Boomerang. The supporting cast includes Obba Babatundé, Bernie Mac, Anthony Anderson, Miguel A. Núñez Jr., Bokeem Woodbine, Guy Torry and Barry Shabaka Henley. The film's format is a story being told by an elderly inmate about two of his friends, who are both wrongly convicted of murder and given a life sentence in prison. The film was the last R-rated role to date for Eddie Murphy, who has stuck mainly to family-friendly films since.
Elderly inmate Willie Long (Obba Babatundé) attends the burial of two friends who recently perished in an infirmary fire in a Mississippi prison. He begins telling the two young inmates digging the graves his friends' life story.
Ray Gibson (Eddie Murphy) and Claude Banks (Martin Lawrence) are two New Yorkers in 1932 from two different worlds. Ray is a small-time hustler and petty thief, and Claude, an honest, yet often selfish minded man, has just been accepted for a job as a bank teller at First Federal of Manhattan. They are both at a club called Spanky's when Ray picks Claude as his mark to pick-pocket. They both end up in the bad graces of the club's owner Spanky (Rick James), and Ray arranges for himself and Claude to do some boot-legging to pay off their debt, heading down south in order to buy a carload of Mississippi 'hooch'. Before they can get back to New York, a man named Winston Hancock (Clarence Williams III), who swindled Ray in a card game, is murdered outside of a juke joint by the town's sheriff, Warren Pike (Ned Vaughn), who frames Ray and Claude for the murder. A short time later, they go to trial, are convicted, and sentenced to life.
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