Truthful Anger Expressed Through Stellar Acting But Thwarted by Contrivance

Rating: 6/10 (12 December 2005)

This omnibus fable is as provocative as its daring concept - thirty-six successive hours of hostile, racially charged activity intertwining diverse characters in contemporary Los Angeles - and contains some powerful acting. But at the end of it all, I was left rather hollow by the experience. Steeped in allegory with scenes that start with a key assumption (either on the character's part or ours) and end with some unexpected redemption, the novelty of first-time director Paul Haggis' 2005 film is initially powerful but gets wearing over its running time.
Haggis ambitiously presents a multi-ethnic city full of unremorseful anger - where the inhabitants without exception eye each other with suspicion and ignorance to the point where the familiar epithets fly. Much of the early dialogue is uncomfortable to hear at first, but Haggis and co-screenwriter Bobby Moresco derive the shock value from the innate familiarity one has with the pent-up feelings expressed in such an unfettered and sometimes blackly humorous manner. The intense honesty of the dialogue is the film's chief virtue, as it is rare for Hollywood to acknowledge any race problem in its backyard. More often, filmmakers pontificate about it from an antiseptic soapbox (consider "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" as a prime example).
A labyrinth plot has been constructed entirely out of the fabric of humanity torn mercilessly by racism, and the travails of over a dozen interconnecting characters make for quite a chess game. An ambitious young and white DA and his ice-cold wife are the victims of a carjacking at gunpoint that leads the wife into a state of hostile paranoia. She has the locks changed at their house by a Latino whom she myopically suspects is a gang member. In truth, the locksmith is a devoted family man who must face daily prejudices in his customer-oriented job. The carjackers are two young, seemingly educated black men who commit the crime out of an uncontrollable rage.
A black TV director faces the humiliation of seeing his wife groped by a racist white cop, while his young, naïve partner watches with equal helplessness. A Persian store owner, constantly labeled an Arab, has his daughter help him buy a gun for protection. A black detective, saddled with his drug-addicted mother and criminal brother, is partnered professionally and personally with a Latina, as they to solve the mystery of a dead body in the road. They all collide in ways that are alternately compelling and manipulative.
Most of the acting is stellar, but accommodating the complex plot with an expansive cast does not allow much screen time on an individual basis. Cast against type are two actors more famous for their light comedy roles - Brendan Fraser and an especially unsympathetic Sandra Bullock as the DA and his wife. With this brief role, actually with one confrontation scene, Bullock may just have overcome the hurdle that constantly befalls Meg Ryan - her perky likability has convincingly been subverted by a sharper, nastier edge of anger. I hope she does more such adventurous work in the future. Michael Peña plays the locksmith with dignity and provides one of the film's most primal moments when an angry customer blindly seeks restitution from him. Larenz Tate and a particularly impressive Ludicrous play the carjackers with intelligence and fury.
Terrence Howard and Thandie Newton sharply delineate a marriage where they straddle precariously between their black identities and the white power base that keeps them living in style. Matt Dillon does some of his best work in the challenging role of the racist cop, while a surprisingly effective Ryan Phillippe embodies the moral ambiguity of Dillon's partner with élan. As the detective, Don Cheadle - who also served as producer - provides the authority to bring it all together. Even an out-of-character Tony Danza shows up in a cameo as a racist actor complaining that another actor is not sounding "black" enough.
But there is an evolving contrivance to the story, especially toward the end when plot threads are sewn up in an almost too circular fashion. For example, there is no denying the power of scenes such as the second encounter between Dillon's and Newton's characters or the revelation of the dead body's identity, but there is also a sense of parable that undercuts the credibility of the situations. The fates of key characters seem to follow a similarly moralizing pattern as previously deplorable bigots show their courage and compassion under emotional duress or dyed-in-the-wool liberals tap almost too easily into their inner misogynist. Everything just seems too neatly thought out to make the movie truly transcendent.
The DVD is surprisingly skimpy on extras - a throwaway introduction by Haggis, a by-the-numbers making-of featurette that focuses more on how the actors desperately wanted to be part of the film, a music video and several trailers that I fast-forwarded through. Haggis, Moresco and Cheadle provide concise though informative commentary on an alternate audio track.