Black and White
USA 1999
Reviewed by Xan Brooks
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
New York City, the present. Black hoodlum Rich Bower decides to ditch crime in favour of a new career as a rap artist. In doing so, he finds himself surrounded by white businessmen and a crop of wealthy white Manhattan teens in thrall to African-American culture: among them Charlie, whose father is an investment banker, and Will, the estranged son of the district attorney. These youngsters become the subject of a documentary by eccentric married film-makers Sam and Terry.
Meanwhile, Rich's childhood friend Dean, now a successful college basketball player, is offered $50,000 by a white gambler, Mark, to throw a game. Dean complies but the arrangement is a sting: Mark is an undercover cop intent on using Dean as a way to prosecute Rich. Dean confides in his anthropologist girlfriend Greta, who promptly betrays him to Rich, with whom she has sex. After consulting with boxer Mike Tyson, Rich decides to have Dean killed and orders Will to shoot him in the gym. Will completes the job but is photographed leaving the building by Mark.
Mark presents the evidence to Will's DA father and the pair hatch a deal. The DA will throw a case out of court that may otherwise damage Mark's career. In return Mark will destroy the evidence in order to shield Will from justice.
Review
A film about racial politics in modern-day New York, Black and White hurls itself at the screen with such abandon that it's in danger of breaking up on impact. What we have here is a picture of its time; a study in cultural blurring; a tale of the disintegration that follows integration. If Black and White sometimes comes over as too undigested to be fully successful, that may be because its subject matter is itself too confused and volatile to be ordered into a neat dramatic framework.
As a result, writer-director James Toback's flawed, fascinating rhapsody gives the impression of discovering itself as it goes along. Largely improvised by an ensemble cast, the film starts out as a social portrait of a crop of wealthy uptown white adolescents who "wanna be black" (aping the dress code, accents and mannerisms of the ghetto) before switching guises into a noir thriller full of stings and double-crosses and eventual murder. The transformation is initially jarring, but there is a method to it too. In involving us in the tale of a black basketball player Dean who is forced to shop his gangster friend Rich (played by Power, of rap act Wu Tang Clan fame) to a white NYPD cop Mark, Toback provides the film with its cautionary pay-off. The end result of white meddling with black culture, he implies, is the death of a young African-American. The venal, shifty whites (represented here by Ben Stiller's unstable cop and William Lee Scott's rich-kid killer) get off scot-free. Push this doctrine to its logical conclusions and it verges on separatism.
Except that Black and White is never that blunt. Instead, as with Toback's other notable works (Fingers, 1977; Two Girls and a Guy, 1997), the film is a study in greys: a vérité whirl that's too close to the meat of its subject to draw any lofty analytical conclusions. Its dynamic is an indistinct jumble of the real and the fake, of improvised stylings and subtle plotting. Toback casts his actors against type (Brooke Shields as a dreadlocked documentary film-maker, model Claudia Schiffer as a graduate student). He ropes in celebrities (Mike Tyson, Rush Hour director Brett Ratner) to play what one assumes to be themselves and lands his characters with non-gender-specific names (married couple Sam and Terry). It all adds to the sense of pose and artifice, of people who are not what they seem. This ploy reaches its giddy climax in a scene in which Robert Downey Jr's bisexual film-maker comes on to Mike Tyson at a New York party. Toback has said that he had deliberately left Tyson with no idea as to which direction the conversation would take. Judging from the man's reaction, Toback might just as well have detonated a bomb beside him.
Black and White is full of such explosions, such moments of rough-hewn ingenuity. By the same token, it also has scenes where it ambles or hits flat notes. A study in multiculturalism, Toback's film is something of a melting-pot itself: mixed-up, messy and teeming with vitality.
Credits
- Director
- James Toback
- Producers
- Michael Mailer
- Daniel Bigel
- Ron Rotholz
- Screenplay
- James Toback
- Director of Photography
- David Ferrara
- Editor
- Myron Kerstein
- Production Designer
- Anne Ross
- Music
- American Cream Team
- Oli 'Power' Grant
- ©Palm Pictures, LLC
- Production Companies
- Screen Gems presents in association with Palm Pictures
- Executive Producers
- Hooman Majd
- Edward R. Pressman
- Mark Burg
- Oren Koules
- Line Producers
- Jennifer Roth
- 2nd Unit:
- Jill Footlick
- Associate Producers
- Alinur Velidedeoglu
- Oli 'Power' Grant
- Raekwon
- Production Supervisor
- Exile Ramirez
- Production Co-ordinator
- Livia Monte
- Executive Production Co-ordinator
- Laurie Dobbins
- Production Managers
- Jonathan A. Manzo
- Jill Rubin
- Location Manager
- Jonathan Shepard
- Post-production Supervisor
- Seth I. Shire
- Assistant Directors
- Vince P. Maggio
- Michael Lerman
- Darren Goldberg
- Eric Liney
- Script Supervisor
- Maureen Tuohy
- Casting
- Louis DiGiaimo
- Stephanie Corsalini
- Steadicam Operators
- William S. Arnot
- Sandy Hays
- Special Effects Co-ordinator
- Drew Jiritano
- Art Director
- Alisa Grifo
- Set Decorator
- Maureen Osborne
- Costume Designer
- Jackie Roach
- Wardrobe Supervisors
- Nicole Schneider
- Jennifer Finkelstein
- Key Make-up Artist
- Nuria Sitja
- Key Hairstylist
- R. Deanna
- Digital End Titles/
Video Dequence - DigiScope
- Opticals
- John Alagna
- Title House
- Music Supervisor
- Oli 'Power' Grant
- Soundtrack
- "You're a Big Girl Now" - The Stylistics; J.S. Bach's "Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F major" - Stuttgarter Kammer Orchestra; "Middle Finger Attitude" - Rhyme Recka; "Kid Encyclopedia" - Rhyme Recka; "Perb's World" - Superb; "Hip Hop" - Raekwon; contains a
- sample from "Love That Will Not Die" - Johnny 'Guitar' Watson; "Can't Get Enough of It" - Mobb Deep; "Break You Off" - Rob and Danny; "Take Me To" - Kimberly Stephens; contains a sample from "Andrea with the Flowered Bag"; "No More" - Tasha and Adelia; "Where You At" - Superb, Rhyme Recka, Baby Thad, Chip Banks; Shostakovich's "Symphony No. 11" - Concertgebouw-orchestra; Vivaldi's "Concerto in C for 2 Trumpets and Strings" - 92nd Street Y Chamber Symphony of New York; "Volochi Papers" - Superb, Baby Thad, Chip Banks, Raekwon; contains a sample from "Bachlorette" - Björk; "Heavyweight Champ" - Chip Banks; "Set It Off" - Rhyme Recka, Chip Banks, Superb, Baby Thad, contains an interpolation of "Set It Off"; "Angel Baby" - Rosie & the Originals; "Hold Your Head" - Chip Banks, contains a sample from "Better Love" - Luther Vandross; "Big Dogs" -Method Man featuring Redman; "The Way You Look Tonight" - The Jaguars; "If You Want This Pussy" - Tanya Arnaud; "Club Life" -Chip Banks; "Jury" - Raekwon, contains a sample from "Andalu" - Chris Spheeris; "We Live Here" - Raekwon, contains a sample from "Ike's Mood" - Isaac Hayes; "Rap Life" - Taz featuring Raekwon; "Urban Life" - Superb, contains a sample from "I Got High" - Aretha Franklin; "Crazy Bald Heads" - Bob Marley & The Wailers; "Cats" - Raekwon; "Cream Team Anthem" - Superb, Rhyme Recka, Baby Thad, Raekwon, contains a sample from "The Bridge" - MC Shan; "Niggonometry" - Canibus; "A Thousand Stars" -Kathy Young & The Innocents; "Hustler 4 Life" -LV; "Reunited" - Wu-Tang Clan; "You" - The Aquatones; "Free" - Mike Fredo; "It's Not a Game" - Superb, Rhyme Recka, Baby Thad, Chip Banks, Raekwon; "Bobby (Everything Must Change)", contains a sample from "Everything Must Change";
"Foxy New" - Sound Mixer
- Antonio L. Arroyo
- Re-recording Mixer
- Peter Waggoner
- Additional Re-recording
- Robert Fernandez
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Byron Wilson
- ADR
- Loop Group Supervisor:
- Mark Schulte
- Recordists:
- Bobby Johanson
- Thor Benitez
- Mixer:
- Matthew C. Beville
- Foley
- Artist:
- Brian Vancho
- Recordist:
- Joe Dohner
- Cast
- Robert Downey Jr
- Terry
- Stacy Edwards
- Sheila King
- Gaby Hoffmann
- Raven
- Jared Leto
- Casey
- Joe Pantoliano
- Bill King
- Bijou Phillips
- Charlie
- Power
- Rich Bower
- Claudia Schiffer
- Greta
- William Lee Scott
- Will King
- Brooke Shields
- Sam Donager
- Ben Stiller
- Detective Mark Clear
- Mike Tyson
- himself
- Elijah Wood
- Wren
- Scott Caan
- Scotty
- Allan Houston
- Dean
- Marla Maples
- Muffy
- Raekwon
- Cigar
- Eddie K. Thomas
- Marty King
- Kidada Jones
- Jesse
- James Toback
- Arnie Tishman
- Kim Matulova
- Kim
- Brett Ratner
- Method Man
- Inspector Deck
- Ghostface
- Sticky Fingaz
- Fredro Starr
- George Wayne
- themselves
- Scott Epstein
- Scott
- Thaddaeus Birkett
- Twin
- Chip Banks
- Nicky
- Hassan Iniko Johnson
- Iniko
- Larry Shaw
- Duke
- Superb
- Pap
- Tyrone Walker
- Tye
- Richard Akiva
- Richie
- Shawn Regruto
- Victor
- Justin Ske
- Jus Ske
- Richard Voll
- Richie V.
- Steven Beer
- attorney
- Sabine Lamy
- Michelle Dent
- girls in bed
- Frank Pesce
- Joey
- Richard Rose
- newscaster
- Chuck Zito
- Chuck
- Robert B. Alexander
- Darren
- Sheila Ball
- Sheila
- John Bolger
- Peter
- Joseph Bongiorno
- John
- Master Killer
- himself
- Frank Adonis
- Frank
- Jodi Cohen
- Jodi
- John Mailer
- John
- Tina Nguyen
- Tina
- Garry Pastore
- Benny
- Richard Elms
- driver
- Keith Grayson
- Kayalay
- Janine Green
- Janine
- Cara Hamill
- Cara
- Katie Hamill
- Katie
- Michael Jordan
- teen 2
- David Alastair King
- King
- Kristin Klosterman
- Charlotte
- Duane McLaughlin
- teen 1
- Eric Keith McNeil
- Combo
- Lauren Pratt
- Sandy
- Shari Raghunath
- Shari
- Katie Sagona
- Katie
- Melvin James Shaad
- doorman
- Tyree Simpson
- club security
- Patrick Watt
- Thomas
- Jade Yorker
- teen 3
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- Columbia Tristar Films (UK)
- 8,916 feet
- 99 minutes 5 seconds
- Dolby Digital/SDDS
- In Colour
- Prints by
- Kodak
- 2.35:1 [Super 35]