History Film / NothingToLose

* BigFancyHouse: This is where T thinks Nick lives in when he thinks Nick is pointing the finger at him for the nearly botched gas station robbery and thinks he’s rich on top of it. While Nick is none of the two thinks T thinks he is, he’s still lives in a very nice house and lives a very comfortable lifestyle.

* CoolCar: Nick’s 1996 GMC Yukon.

* WhatYouAreInTheDark: [[spoiler: Nick life seems to spiral toward life of a criminal and then he meets a woman from his office, after already performing the successful robbery. Being drunk and lonely, he follows her seduction and their flirt quickly leads to bed... where Nick hits the wall and realises what he's doing with his life. He excuses her for his shameful behaviour and runs to the phone to call his wife. As it quickly turns out, she wasn't having an affair either, and that means... OhCrap.]]

* WrongSideOfTheTracks: Terrence and his family live in a modern ghetto variation, where night shooting are common enough to rather ''annoy'' them rather than make shocked or afraid.

* ClickHello: T is introduced to Nick and the audience this way - he uncocks his revolver right after slipping silently into Nick's car.

** The flashlights come with [[spoiler: radio]].

* GameOfChicken: Since Nick is outright suicidal at this point of his life, he doesn't even flinch when driving head-on toward a truck driven by [[spoiler: the gas owner robbed by T The other driver eventually chickens and slams right into the police cruiser on Nick's back]].

-->'''Nick:''' I'm ''married''. [[spoiler: ([[BlastingItOutOfTheirHands shoots Rig's gun]])]]

* GangstaStyle: Charlie holds his gun this way.

* BeneathNotice: T-Paul is able to [[spoiler: infiltrate an office building dressed as an electrician sometime before the denouement]]. Nick is the only one who realizes the significance.
* BigGuyLittleGuy: Inverted. While Nick is at least a foot taller than T-Paul, he's the smart one and planning ahead in their duo, while T provides his street-smarts at best, performing stupid acts of minor thievery at worst.

** The videotape T-Paul makes of Nick trying desperately to [[spoiler: kill a spider ''and'' extinguish his burning shoes comes in very handy at the end]].

* GameOfChicken: Since Nick is outright suicidal at this point of his life, he doesn't even flinch when driving head-on toward a truck driven by [[spoiler: the gas owner robbed by T. The other driver eventually chickens and slams right into the police cruiser on Nick's back]].

* HiddenDepths: Turns out T-Paul is not just a random carjacker, but in fact a truly desperate father of two and a loving husband who despite his high technical qualifications can't find any job and escape the ghetto he's trapped in with his family.

* JiveTurkey: While T-Paul subverts it for the most part and only resorts to it when playing up the hardass black robber persona, Nick still overblows it out of proportions when annoyed, opening the most recognisable scene from the whole movie.

* MuggingTheMonster: This essentially kicks off the core of the plot, when T-Paul tries to carjack Nick, and Nick peels off with him in the car, having "nothing to lose" at this point.

* NotWhatItLooksLike: Happens twice

* OddCouple: There is absolutely ''nothing'' that Nick and T-Paul have in common and they bicker a lot most of the time. And yet circumstances force them to create a duo so effective at working together, even they are surprised themselves how good team they make.

* WrongSideOfTheTracks: T-Paul and his family live in a modern ghetto variation, where night shooting are common enough to rather ''annoy'' them rather than make shocked or afraid.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: [[spoiler: Nick eventually learns there was no affair. Roughtly a hour before that, he robbed his boss and destroyed his art collection in an act of revange said "affair"]].

* ASimplePlan: In an outburst of anger against T-Paul's TooDumbToLive acts of petty crime, Nick is dared by T to create a better crime plan if he thinks he's all that smarter. He almost instantly laids down a simple, well-organised plan to rob his boss of his private money without leaving any traces, in the same time taking revange for the affair the boss has with Ann... and then realises this actually might work. [[spoiler: And unlike typical example, despite the plan having few minor setbacks on the way, [[SubvertedTrope they manage to pull it without bigger problems or delays]]]].

[[quoteright:288:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nothingtolosemovie.jpg]] -->"Boy, did you pick the wrong guy on the wrong day."

-->"Boy, did you pick the wrong guy on the wrong day."

''Nothing to Lose'' is a 1997 action-comedy film starring Creator/TimRobbins as Nick Beam and Creator/MartinLawrence as Terrence Paul "T-Paul" Davidson. It was written and directed by Creator/SteveOedekirk.

* TheCameo: Creator/SteveOedekirk appears as a lip-synching security guard.

''Nothing to Lose'' is a 1997 action-comedy film starring Creator/TimRobbins as Nick Beam and Creator/MartinLawrence as Terrence Paul "T-Paul" Davidson. It was written and directed by Creator/SteveOedekirk.

* BigGuyLittleGuy: Tim Robbins is at least a foot taller than Martin Lawrence, and while Nick is the one who comes up with the scheme, T-Paul is the one who plans everything out.
* BlastingItOutOfTheirHands: Nick manages to do this to Rig.

* ChekhovsGun: The videotape T-Paul makes of Nick trying desperately to [[spoiler: kill a spider ''and'' extinguish his burning shoes comes in very handy at the end]].

* UncleTomfoolery: T-Paul tries to avert this; for all his ghetto carjacker posturing, he only resorts to robbery to support his family because he can't find a job pursuing his true calling in electrical engineering. That said, he ticks all the boxes.

-->''T-Paul'': It means there's a spider on your motherfuckin' head, man!

-->''T-Paul'': There's a spider on your head.
-->''Nick Beam'': What?
-->''T-Paul'': There's a spider on yo head.
-->''Nick Beam'': Look, I'm sorry, I'm not up on all this jive talkin', home boy lingo, what's that supposed to mean? "There's a spider on your head"?

* AgonyOfTheFeet: A strange series of events leads to Nick setting his shoes on fire while trying to kill a spider. Short version: his shoes are soaked in gasoline and he managed to step on a book of matches ''just right'' to ignite them. [[FridgeLogic How he managed to do that with safety matches rather than the strike-anywhere type is unclear.]]
* BeneathNotice: T-Paul is able to infiltrate an office building dressed as an electrician sometime before the denouement. Nick is the only one who realizes the significance.

* ChekhovsGun: The videotape T-Paul makes of Nick trying desperately to kill a spider ''and'' extinguish his burning shoes comes in very handy at the end.

* GroinAttack: Symbolically, as Nick hacks the phallus off the aforementioned fertility statue with a Katana.
* HoldingTheFloor: Nick tries desperately to invoke this when his boss is reviewing the security tapes from the robbery to prevent him from seeing Nick's uncovered face on the tape. He fails, but T-Paul has another surprise in store.

* MuggingTheMonster: This essentially kicks off the core of the plot, when T-Paul tries to carjack Nick, and Nick peels off with him in the car.

-->'''Rig:''' There are two kinds of people in the world: Killers, and everybody else. Which one are you, huh?
-->'''Nick:''' I'm ''married''. (shoots Rig's gun)

* MistakenForCheating: [[spoiler: It turns out that the two people Nick mistook for his wife and his boss having sex in their bed was really his sister-in-law and her fiance having sex in his marital bed. The cufflinks he found ''were'' his boss's, but he'd left them behind during a previous Christmas party and his wife had set them out to return to him.]]

* MistakenForCheating: [[spoiler: It turns out that the two people Nick mistook for his wife and his boss having sex in their bed was really his sister-in-law and her fiance having sex in his marital bed. The cufflinks he found ''were'' his boss's, but he'd left them behind during a previous Christmas party.]]

* GroinAttack: Symbolically, as Nick hacks the phallus off the abovementioned fertility statue with a Katana.

As the man with no job and the man with no life are forced to bond, they hatch a scheme to get back at Nick's boss by cleaning out an office safe containing hundreds of thousands of dollars, while trying to dodge a pair of robbers who think Nick and T-Pain are horning in on their turf. Wacky Hijinks ensue.

T-Paul is about to have a very bad day. He just found the perfect mark to rob--some schlub in his SUV barely paying attention to his surroundings, so he hops in the car and tries to carjack him. That Schlub is Nick Beam, and this was his breaking point. He peels out with the hapless carjacker in tow.

* MistakenForCheating: [[spoiler: It turns out that the two people Nick mistook for his wife and his boss having sex in their bed was really his sister-in-law and her fiance having sex in his marital bed. The cufflinks he found ''were'' his boss's, but he'd left them behind during a previous Christmas party.