Tough Racial and Psychodrama Picture

Rating: 6/10 (24 February 2006)

It had all the modern premier film touches: great shooting, good acting, but a flawed, cheesy script and theme with that annoying ethereal emo music. I was not impressed with the same old racial stereotypes, but they did change them up a bit. Even the black punks in the beginning, who babble on about imaginary racial conspiracies while proving the black negative stereotype correct, felt flat. For instance, the bigoted gun store owner, not a far out stereotype from my experience, would probably put business ahead of bigotry and not tick off his Iranian customers. Though to it's credit it showed everyone being racist to everyone else. There was even a subplot where two undercover cops crash into each other then shoot it out, a dead black the surviving white. The LAPD wants to hang the white survivor out as a scapegoat to the black power mob while the black investigator assigned to the case has serious doubts.One of the saddest scenes was when the black investigator's junkie mother was ranting about how "his people" killed her other criminal carjacking son. Well, technically it was true. But if anyone led to her dead criminal son turning out how he did, it was his worthless junkie mom. In a sad way that is so real, the people who do the most complaining cause the most damage.
Basically, this was a B level melodrama that would have been dynamite in the 60's but in the 2000's, it sounds worn out, exploitative and tinny. But it did try to tackle a serious issue and is probably one of the best of its type. I went back to this because of all the racial tensions created by the media and the black power race baiting mob in these days. The latest racial nonsense like the Oscars are too white really grind my gears, not to mention such rubbish as making a total punk lowlife like Michael Brown into an innocent victim, replete with lies about how he was holding his hands up when he was shot. Compared to all the garbage like I mentioned, this movie was almost documentary and objective. AND IT WON THE Oscars, yet the race baiters like Jada Pinkett seem to forget that. As well as having some good twists.