MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Nuts’ Puts an Ethical Issue on the Stand

You can paraphrase the impassioned premise of “Nuts” (selected theaters) as much as you want; it still comes down to this: Who has the right to say who is nuts?

Claudia Draper (Barbra Streisand), standing trial for manslaughter, may in many details look like a classic nut case. She is strident, uncommunicative, aggressive and even, at times, dangerous. There is certainly something pretty nutty about her choice of profession--this child of comfortably off, solicitous parents (Maureen Stapleton, Karl Malden) is a high-rent hooker, and the manslaughter in question occurred to one of her more executive johns (Leslie Nielsen).

Guilt or innocence is beside the point--the question is mental competency. Two hospital psychiatrists, Eli Wallach among them, have already said that she should not stand trial, that she should be judged incompetent and institutionalized. It is her contention that she is as sane as . . . well, certainly you, or you, or you. She demands to be found sane enough to be tried.

“Nuts” is itself impassioned. A high-flying star vehicle, with a half-dozen star character actors twinkling below like some dream safety net, it wants to be considered relevant and important. Actually, like its leading character, it, too, should relax and prepare to be enjoyed for its intrinsic virtues.

It has two of today’s most experienced and charismatic actors--Streisand and Richard Dreyfuss as her court-appointed attorney--giving no quarter as they scratch and claw their way toward the truth. It has one of the most satisfying formats known to movies, the courtroom drama, which has already held up beautifully for Cher and Dennis Quaid in “Suspect.” And it does have that supporting cast, which also includes James Whitmore as the keen-eyed judge on whom everything eventually depends, and a quick, nasty moment by both Nielsen and William Prince, as the family-hired attorney.

So if its relevance seems a little more dated now than the 1980 play by Tom Topor on which it was based, that hardly matters. If its shocking secret lost its tingle some time ago, the film, with a screenplay by Topor, Darryl Ponicsan and Alvin Sargent, still contains a lot of chewy, old-fashioned movie pleasure, and in Martin Ritt (“The Molly McGuires,” “Norma Rae,” “Sounder.”), it has a director who is no stranger to the theme of social injustice.

(You may not remember Ritt working in such enormous, screen- filling close-ups before, but this is also a Streisand-produced film, and she has more than once proved that she knows exactly what she wants--and gets it.)

Streisand sails into the role with nothing held back. This is a character who gives fresh meaning to “her own worst enemy.” There are great savage exchanges between her and Dreyfuss, all nerve and sinew and fast tempo. And just as you think Claudia is going to give an inch in court, to let her lawyer proceed with a tricky line of defense, she shuts him down, angrily, infuriatingly, rapping on her water glass with a pencil. Streisand fans will themselves go nuts during her big set-piece, as she quietly and steadily flusters the state’s attorney (Robert Webber) with a steamy line of dirty talk from her witness chair.

These are some of the film’s best moments. Wallach, Malden and Stapleton are left with some of its least surprising ones--but Malden seems to have found a way to interject another layer of interest to his predictable character: his phrasing as this soothing, super-compassionate step-father, a not uncomplicated man, sounds eerily like Ronald Reagan’s.

Ritt’s direction and, particularly Sidney Levin’s editing during the crucial second-act sequence, keep the tension as taut as possible, and Dreyfuss and Streisand take care of the rest. (The film is MPAA-rated R for language, violence, sexual content.)