From: leeper@mtgzy.att.com (Mark R. Leeper)
Subject: REVIEW: ZEBRAHEAD
Reply-To: leeper@mtgzy.att.com
Organization: AT&T, Middletown NJ
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 20:14:56 GMT
Followup-To: rec.arts.movies
Summary: r.a.m.r. #01594
Keywords: author=Leeper

                                 ZEBRAHEAD
                      A film review by Mark R. Leeper
			Copyright 1992 Mark R. Leeper

          Capsule review:  This is a realistic but far too open-
     ended story of racial tensions that may or may not have led
     to violence.  Story of a white Jewish boy dating a black girl
     and its eventual outcome by neophyte writer-director Anthony
     Drazen avoids being too obviously a Romeo-and-Juliet story,
     but ends up muddling whatever point it was trying to make.
     Rating: low +1 (-4 to +4).

     The setting is Detroit in what was once a middle-class neighborhood.
Now it is run-down, bombed-out, and polluted over.  One guy in the
neighborhood likes to set fire to his lawn and see it burn in jets of flame
from some flammable pollutant in the soil.  These days the people who live
in this neighborhood are people who have no other choice.  The area is
dominated by blacks, with some Asians, Hispanics, and Jews mixed in.  Zack
Glass (played by Michael Rapaport) is a Jew, but his culture and friends are
black.  Zack's father Richard (played by Ray Sharkey) runs a record store.
Richard has two interests in life: making sure he and his son are getting
enough sex, and listening to black music from the 1950s and 1960s.

     Zack's best friend Dee (played by DeShonn Castle) is black.  Through
him Zack meets Dee's beautiful cousin Nikki (played by N'Bushe Wright).
When Zack starts dating Nikki, their friends and family are not sure what to
make of the situation.  There seems to be a suspicion that a white-black
relationship will not work out, but this is not "Romeo and Juliet" or "West
Side Story."  This is not a story of whites and blacks at war, but there are
tensions that set events in motion that do lead to violence.

     ZEBRAHEAD is not a simplistic story.  Even when violence does occur it
is left open to the viewer's interpretation whether or not the violence even
can be termed a racial incident.  Anthony Drazen has shown us the background
for an incident without tying it up and making it simple.  As a first-time
writer and director he has told a story that is probably near his own
experience and his characters both talk and act realistically.  Most are
also acting for the first time and probably playing characters much like
themselves.  The only familiar face is, in fact, Ray Sharkey, a rather good
actor who takes James Woods sorts of roles.  The dialogue and acting are
both quite acceptable considering the overall lack of experience.  Only the
ambiguity of the events of the story works against the film.  However, one
does get to the end of this film expecting some point to have been made a
little more strongly than Drazen has.  The "Okay, so what?" dissatisfied
feeling does not serve this film well.  As a result, I give it a low +1 on
the -4 to +4 scale.

					Mark R. Leeper
					att!mtgzy!leeper
					leeper@mtgzy.att.com
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews