FILM REVIEW `Black and White': Talk the Talk, Then Steal the Life Force
By ELVIS MITCHELL
n "Jim," his 1971 standing-in-the-shadow-of-negritude biography of the football great Jim Brown, the white writer-director James Toback wrote, "If there were a black boy anywhere in America whose vision of boyhood excluded both sports and entertainment, he was a freak, a mutation of consciousness."
In his newest film, "Black and White," Mr. Toback expands his observation to include the white kids of privilege who have swallowed hip-hop culture whole and wear its approximations with pride. They're the ones who don't make you cross the street in trepidation when you see them flood the boulevard in loose-fitting jeans, chanting all of the malevolence out of some Big Pun song.
This is a stimulating movie that's full of ideas -- it's bursting with them -- and that grafts Dostoyevskian obsession to the distancing journalistic clarity of rap.
The movies haven't explicitly confronted the white worship of black culture in some time. Mr. Toback hits it with a chain saw, and chunks go flying noisily. He dashes through more melodrama and moral crises than you'd see in an entire season of "E.R." He dips in and out of story lines like samples on a 12-inch single.
Here's the group of white kids trying to roll black, who are being followed by a documentary filmmaker Sam (Brooke Shields, in dreadlocks) and her husband, Terry (Robert Downey Jr.), who, in a film filled with striking characters serves as Mr. Toback's muse. Their travels intersect with those of Rich Bower (Power), a brother trying to step away from the hard-knock life, moving from his role as shot caller on the streets to the recording studio as a producer (Power's real-life role with the Wu Tang Clan).
As the film quotes the hip-hop diva L'il Kim, "Can you be ghetto without living in the ghetto?" The wild young white things in "Black and White" are out to bounce ghetto fabulous. "They think they're gonna get some life force," Rich observes of the white kids circling him. "I'm trying to get a little bit of information" from them.
Key among them is Will (William Lee Scott), described as "some white boy trying to be" black by the African-American college basketball star Dean (Allan Houston of the Knicks in his stab at an acting debut). Will goes further, and sinks deeper, than any of the other white hip-hoppers manqués in trying to embrace the thug life. He wants to be like Mike: Tyson (who appears in the film as himself), not Jordan.
Still, it's all good for Rich and Dean, his boyhood friend, until Dean is entrapped in a point-fixing scheme by Mark (Ben Stiller), a nervous cop, and told he can shake free only by setting Rich up.
"Black and White" sends out some messages with semaphores. Every scene featuring an upright white family seems to be set in stately Wayne Manor, where classical music plays to anesthetize the inhabitants.
Charlie (Bijou Philips), the poor little rich blond girl, fires up a blunt in her bedroom, an oasis of muted Laura Ashley. Despite the speed bumps of exposition, the movie is a hard-driven, fascinating affair. Mr. Toback's ear for music generates a buzz, from doo-wop to the muscular discourse of the spin masters the X-ecutioners (formerly the X-Men) and of course Wu Tang Clan member Raekwon, who plays Rich's right hand, Cigar.
Some cast members, like Mr. Houston, seem to be feeling their way in the dark. Though he has enormous waves of physical confidence -- he walks into every room as if he owned it -- he's at a loss at keeping up with the true actors who have total belief in their ability to sell a line. (And it doesn't help that he looks a little old for a college player.) In the case of poor Claudia Schiffer, the German supermodel, who plays Dean's lover, the movie stops to applaud her efforts to wrestle English to the floor and pin it, as she plays a student of anthropology. She seems to been matched with Houston for their consonant lack of comfort.
Some of the actors, like Ms. Phillips, with her head fixed on a homegirl swivel, are a source of continual surprise. The natural authority of Power puts him front and center. He has the sheer effrontery of a movie star. Mr. Toback is attracted to danger and to performers who like to slam the sound meter straight into the red. Fortunately for him, he has the services of that most audacious of actors, Mr. Downey, who seems to be out to startle himself as well as the others in the scene.
Mr. Downey has two scenes that will rank among the best in movies this year. In one, he cruises an extremely resistant young man on the Staten Island Ferry. "I'm going to see my girlfriend," the young man snaps.
Mr. Downey trills: "Oh? What's his name?" with the sweet optimism of the tortoise running the hare. In the other scene he floats around Mr. Tyson like a lavender-scented cloud, trying to wheedle an assignation that creates tension because of Mr. Downey's wide-eyed appetite; he's the deer who longs to be caught in the headlights.
Mr. Tyson is a delight, too. Here he's the Yoda of the underworld, trying to counsel Rich while remaining a cubic centimeter away from invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself. He has the restless intensity of the autodidact, using words as if he were showing off expensive baubles with the price tags still dangling. "This is what I'm deciphering from your vernacular," he says in his high, soft voice.
By the end the movie departs from the hip-hop world and settles into drama right out of the Yiddish theater: a son's need to make a connection with his dad. Joe Pantoliano steps in the senior role. He plays a rigid prosecutor who's drawn into Will's problems. The reprobate cop Mark turns to him as well, seeking official approbation and a father figure. The story turns into one about the curative power of family, be it the Wu Tang Clan on Staten Island, its Fortress of Solitude, or literal family, a recurrent theme in Mr. Toback's work.
"Black and White" often operates as a paroxysm of excitement, crackling with the pixilation of pop. It's another of Mr. Toback's quick-talking autobiographies that, like the best pop, have a clock running on their expiration dates. Better catch it before it goes stale.
Most important, despite being about youth, the movie has an adult take on constantly shifting loyalties and envy. Mr. Tyson's character sums it up best: "It's the age-old story. Deceit and treachery."
"Black and White" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes nudity, strong language, sexual situations, drug use and violence.
BLACK AND WHITE
Written and directed by James Toback; director of photography, David Ferrara; edited by Myron Kerstein; music by Oli Grant; production designer, Anne Ross; produced by Michael Mailer, Daniel Bigel and Ron Rotholz; released by Screen Gems in association with Palm Pictures. Running time: 100 minutes. This film is rated R.
WITH: Scott Caan (Scotty), Robert Downey Jr. (Terry), Stacy Edwards (Sheila), Gaby Hoffmann (Raven), Allan Houston (Dean), Jared Leto (Casey), Marla Maples (Muffy), Method Man (himself), Joe Pantoliano (Bill King), Bijou Phillips (Charlie), Power (Rich), Raekwon (Cigar), Claudia Schiffer (Greta), William Lee Scott (Will), Brooke Shields (Sam), Ben Stiller (Mark), Mike Tyson (himself) and Elijah Wood (Wren).
