VIDEO

Press, 7 October 1988, Page 24

VIDEO

4 Nirts’—a life is on the line

By

DAVID CLARKSON

Barbara Streisand plays a woman on trial for her life in Warner Home Video’s challenging drama, “Nuts.” Even if she is not facing the death penalty, she feels her life is on the line in a hearing that will decide whether she is sane enough to stand trial for murder. The character is Claudia Draper, a high-class Park Avenue prostitute who has murdered a client. Her conservative family would be happy to see her declared of unsound mind. It would mean there would be no embarrassing trial, and she would be institutionalised, probably for life. But Claudia will not accept that. She demands her day in court, to challenge the system designed to prove that she cannot stand trial. She believes

that in a trial she would be able to prove selfdefence. Her unenthusiastic ally in this is the harassed courtroom lawyer Aaron Levinsky, played by Richard Dreyfuss. It is the first time that Academy Award winners Dreyfuss and Streisand have been teamed. Claudia has defied society’s demands about appropriate female behaviour. Now, in court, she challenges what is regarded as normal. Bearded, balding Levinsky asks her in court: “You were a hooker for three years without being busted?” “Now tell me I’m not competent,” comes her wry reply, as she sets ’about winning the audience over. The film has been made from Thomas Topor’s Broadway play. It keeps to the claustropho-

bia and confined sets of his concept. Dreyfuss has had a remarkable string of recent successes released on video. They include the comedies “Tin Men” and

"Stakeout,” and “Nuts” seems certain to continue the trend. This absorbing drama has a very strong supporting cast. Maureen Stapleton and Karl Malden play

Claudia’s parents. Eli Wallach is the psychiatrist who believes she should be institutionalised, and James Whitmore is her judge. All the music for the movie was written and produced by Streisand herself, but she sings none of it. This is her first film since her 1983 flop, “Yentl.” The video also produced by Streisand, runs for 116 minutes. “Real Men,” another Warners release, has nothing whatever to do with a certain brand of vans, nor anyone named Brucie. It is a comedy that teams James Belushi as C.I.A. agent Nick Pirandello, and John Ritter as an insurance salesman who somehow have to save mankind from a bizarre plot. Pirandello is something of a legend in C.I.A.

circles because his partners have the habit of dying on assignment. He also confides that he once “crashed a K.G.B. Christmas party ... they acted like they’d never seen a flame-thrower.” Mild-mannered Bob Wilson, the insurance agent, is a dead ringer for

a man recently murdered by enemy forces, and the Government desperately needs him to make an important exchange. It’s a wild change of scene for him. He has been pushed around by everyone, including his milkman. This story of an unlikely partnership.