Black and White (2000)

REVIEW
A difficult treatise on race relations in contemporary America, Black and White is the ambitious but unremarkable tale of disparate New Yorkers coming together -- not by choice but by happenstance. Beginning with a weird, interracial three-way in Central Park, the disjointed but often compelling story follows the bumpy road of Rich Bower (Grant), a black thug who tries to go straight and make a name for himself as a hip-hop impresario. Crossing his path are: a white husband-and-wife filmmaking team (Shields, Downey) who are making a documentary on white teens emulating ghetto culture; a couple of those kids; a white cop (Stiller) determined to nab the former hood, even at the cost of blackmailing Bower's best friend into betraying him; and Mike Tyson, playing himself in a bizarre but effective casting coup. Director Toback provides strong visuals to tell this mutiracial patchwork, but is let down by his own rambling screenplay which only occasionally rises above the melodramatic and sometimes clichéd situations. Among an uneven cast, Downey is baffling as an overbearing gay husband (who even gets slapped by Tyson!).