Hey, stoopid, this film's about race!

Rating: 5/10 (9 September 2005)

To misquote somebody, no film ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the public. And this film is no exception. For in case you should not notice that it is about race, it is laid on with a trowel. Virtually every scene, every conversation, turns clumsily into a racial issue. Forget subtlety, it doesn't pay.
Examples: Scene 1: two cars have a minor collision. The drivers immediately begin trading racial insults. One (Chinese) accuses the other of being a typical 'Mexican driver'. The other driver (Hispanic) says because the first is Asian she's too short to see above the steering wheel.
Scene 2: two innocuous-looking young men (black) feel insulted when a wealthy woman (white) avoids them on the pavement. However - our assumptions are challenged - because the black men then pull out guns and rob the woman and her husband. When the couple get home, they have a loud, embarrassing (and implausible) argument because the man who's right there changing the locks is black, and the woman says he'll make copies of the keys so his 'homies' can burgle the house.
Scene 3: a man (Iranian) is in a gun-shop buying a gun, but the shop owner (white) insults him, saying that he's plotting jihad, and has him thrown out of the shop.
After a few minutes of this I thought it might tone down a bit, but no. It gets worse.
Two policeman (white) stop a couple (black) in a car for no good reason. One of the policeman gropes the black woman, which her husband feels powerless to stop. When they get home she upbraids him for Uncle Tom-like behaviour. The other policeman, horrified at his partner's racist behaviour, reports him to his superior; however the superior (black) doesn't believe him.
A man (white) goes to a health insurance office to ask a woman (black) to pay for his father to see a different doctor. When she declines, he accuses her of having got her job through preferential treatment of blacks.
Two men (black) are driving along arguing about the use of the word 'n**ger' in songs. They accidentally knock over a pedestrian. They look under the car and, seeing that he's Chinese, discuss whether to pull him out from under the car or just drive on.
And so on. White on black racism, black on Chinese racism, Chinese on Hispanic racism - almost every single scene (I'm not kidding) rapidly turns out to be a crude set-up for another racial issue with guaranteed shock-value. Conversations suddenly degrade into racial insults in a way that (though I don't live in Los Angeles) I've never, ever seen happen in real life.
In the second half of the film, it all goes a bit topsy-turvy, as new racial situations turn good guys bad and vice versa. The groping policeman (white) heroically rescues his female victim (black) from a burning car. The other, non-racist, policeman (white) gives a lift to a man (black), then, fearing attack, shoots his innocent passenger dead. Etc. etc. Hey, we may be dumb, but now you're really messing with our heads! Good films seem like reality, but much of this film felt so contrived it was more like watching a formula unwinding. About the only thing it lacked was a big red sign in the cinema saying RACIAL ISSUE, flashing on and off every 30 seconds.