Mixing It Up
FILM: Black and White
DIRECTOR: James Toback
STARRING: Brooke Shields, Oli `Power' Grant
GRADE: C+
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YOUNG GANGSTER RICH BOWER (OLI `POWER' GRANT) TRIES TO BREAK INTO THE MUSIC BIZ WITH HIP-HOP PARTNER CIGAR (RAEKWON) IN BLACK AND WHITE.
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James Toback is a filmmaker whose reputation for innovation has eluded me. I
liked his screenplays for Karel Reisz's The Gambler and Barry Levinson's
Bugsy pretty well, but his own directorial efforts in such films as
The Pick-Up Artist and Two Girls and a Guy have seemed to lack
focus and clear intent. The same can be said for his latest effort, Black
and White.
Initially, Black and White seems to be the story of a
group of white New York high schoolers and their fascination with black hip-hop
culture, all the more so when Brooke Shields shows up as filmmaker Sam Donager
to make a documentary on that precise subject. But, for extended passages, this
film seems the story of youthful black gangster Rich Bower (Oli "Power" Grant),
who is trying to move into the music business. Mysteriously, Bower seems a
secondary figure in his own hip-hop group, with the songs written and lead
rapping performed by Cigar (Raekwon). And, from there, following the action is
akin to following a race in which all the runners start at one point and head
off in separate directions.
The film opens with a white teenage girl named Charlie (Bijou
Phillips), who likes to do threesomes in the park with another girl and Bower.
Why the park? Bower has a swank pad. Wren (Elijah Wood), one of Charlie's
schoolmates, has a crush on her, but he's fascinated by the tough black world,
too. With their teacher Casey (Jared Leto), the white kids talk about black
culture, but not one word Toback puts in his characters' mouths sounds real.
The white kids are envious of Will King (William Lee Scott), a slightly older
white lad whom Bower allows to hang around his organization. But we can see
that Bower and Cigar regard Will as a kind of curio; they examine him once in a
while, and they put him to use when they can, but he's hardly accepted as part
of their group.
This is all well and good, perhaps. But then Black and White
lurches off into the story of undercover cop Mark (Ben Stiller), who is trying
to entrap a college basketball player named Dean (New York Knicks guard Allan
Houston) into throwing a game. Dean isn't really Mark's quarry, however; Mark
just wants to compromise Dean so he can get at Bower. Dean and Bower grew up
together and have remained friends, even though Dean has always avoided
trouble. Dizzy yet? There's more. Dean is living with gorgeous blond
anthropologist Greta (Claudia Schiffer), who just happens to be Mark's former
squeeze. Greta seems to have the morals of a rattlesnake. She not only dumps
her lovers, she sells them out. And on it goes. Will's father is Bill King (Joe
Pantoliano), a powerful district attorney whom Mark wants to blackmail into
dropping corruption charges that are forthcoming against him. And what does any
of this have to do with white teenagers' wanting to emulate black hip-hop
culture?
The movie does have one entirely arresting passage. The white
teens, Charlie included, have led Sam to Bower's apartment. Don't ask why he
would let any of them in. Bower has interest in Charlie solely as a sexual
plaything, and not, we gather, much interest even in that. But there they all
are, underage white dopes, tough black gangsters and documentarian Sam talking
a mile a minute while she's sporting a nose ring that's obviously fake. And
there, across the room, standing at a window looking out at a black urban night
is boxer Mike Tyson playing himself. Terry Donager (Robert Downey Jr.), Sam's
bisexual husband, strolls over to make chit-chat and thinly veiled proposals
that result in a sudden and shocking act of violence that conveys scalding
menace and deep-seated hostility, even though no blood is spilled and no one
ultimately is harmed.
This very unsettling sequence is absolutely the best thing in the
movie. But I haven't a clear idea what it's supposed to mean. It got to me,
however, whereas nothing else in the film remotely did. As Toback follows his
various narrative threads to their anticlimactic results, it became more and
more confusing trying to figure out what the filmmaker is trying to say. That
the system is corrupt? Whites have a leg up? For many African-Americans,
violence is a palpable reality in ways most whites will never know? Sure, all
those things. But none of that is new to us. And Toback doesn't breathe life
into any of his characters in such a way as to make us care about any discovery
he or she might make. This film might be hip, but it's sorely lacking in hop.
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