Director James Toback loves to mix it up.
In his 1978 film Fingers, his protagonist, played by Harvey Keitel, was a would-be concert pianist who sidelined as a strong-arm man for his gangster father. It was high art and primitive violence in one package.
His last dramatic feature was Two Girls and a Guy, a 1998 film detailing the grueling let's-talk-about-our-relationship repercussions that arise when an actor (Robert Downey Jr.) gets an unexpected visit from both his girlfriends, who have just been made aware of each other's existence.
Set in New York, Toback's new film Black and White mixes it up big time as he explores the tensions that arise between affluent, uptown white teens and their friends in Harlem.
Toback begins the proceedings with a Central Park menage-a-trois as ganglord Rich Bower (Power of rap outfit Wu Tang Clan) enjoys the attention of the hip-hop loving Charlie (singer Bijou Phillips) and another girlfriend.
Charlie next shows up at the dinner table of her affluent family to tell her dad she's been at the "libary." Charlie affects a Li'l Kim inflection when she talks. Dad, a whitebread Wall Street type, just doesn't get it.
From here, Toback's camera pinballs all over New York. Here are Charlie and her white, hip-hop-loving friends, who are being filmed by dilettante documentary-maker Sam Donager (Brooke Shields) and her transparently gay husband Terry (Robert Downey Jr.). Here is Rich's crew, which includes his mentor, boxer Mike Tyson (played by Tyson), and a boyhood friend, college basketball player Dean (played by Alan Houston of the New York Knicks).
Rich and Dean are friends, but in a twist on the Othello dynamic, it's a conniving Desdemona who comes between them. She is Greta (Claudia Schiffer), a grad student who betrays one lover to gain another after Dean is compromised by a grimy gambler (Ben Stiller) after throwing a basketball game.
This latter plot twist feels terribly contrived and out of place in an otherwise free-form, floating narrative.
Still, the film survives it simply because there is an invigorating energy to those face-off scenes, most notably when a starstruck Terry dares to come on to Tyson. Bad idea.
Toback approaches Tyson with respect bordering on awe, much the same way he approached football legend Jim Brown in Fingers. He credits Tyson with intelligence, and for his efforts, he gets the boxer to clarify the way things are in the gangsta realm with the clarity of the most articulate rapper.
Ultimately though, Black and White is a savvy response to the rainbow-collective ideals of the '60s, in which we imagined how all races learned to live in harmony, yadda yadda yadda. Sure, we see how hip-hop culture crosses racial boundaries. But we also see a white kid kill a black man, not out of racial hatred but because the white kid wants to be black and prove his worth to his black friends.
Employing savage ironies like these, Toback shows harmony is still a long way off.
(This film is rated R)
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