Life

Is life a game, as David Cronenberg's eXistenZ postulates, or is it a bad prison rap, as this new Eddie Murphy movie maintains? Either way, it's a rare occasion when Hollywood releases two such metaphysically monikered movies on the same day. Directed by Ted Demme, Life pairs Murphy with Martin Lawrence as Ray and Claude, two mismatched buddies serving the title term in a Mississippi State Prison after being falsely convicted of murder in 1932.

In a belabored set-up the pair -- Ray a sleazy con man, Claude a finicky bank teller -- are thrown together by mischance into driving a truck full of moonshine from down South back to Harlem, only to get framed by a redneck sheriff for killing a gambler. What follows is the lighter side of hard labor, Cool Hand Luke by way of Beverly Hills Cop, and the film doesn't really gel until the troublesome decades of the '60s and '70s are montaged over and the actors can layer on the old-man make-up and mannerisms. Murphy and Lawrence have a kind of Odd Couple chemistry that is more touching than raucous, and even the less politically correct humor has a chastened edge -- the cons prove heroic, if tragic. Neither does the film shy from the poignant and philosophical -- opening and closing in the prison graveyard, it evokes the somber recent documentary about Louisiana's Angola State Prison, The Farm. Although Life is hardly beautiful, it does pass the time.

-- Peter Keough