Zebrahead

Zack Glass (Michael Rapaport) is hip-hop all the way. He walks the walk, talks the talk and spins rap at his high school's dances. The only thing that doesn't jibe is that Zack is white and Jewish. Nevertheless he is well acclimated in the predominantly Black Detroit high school. His best friend, Dee Wimms (DeShonn Castle), gets a kick out of Zack's pseudo-Black street image. Dee, himself an African-American, realizes this is Zack's way of fitting in.

At home Zack is used to his father Richard's (Ray Sharkey) ever present parade of female guests. Since Zack's mother died 12 years earlier he and his father have been on their own. Richard owns a downtown vintage record shop that is about to close since there are few folks left in the city. Dee's cousin, Nikki (N'Bushe Wright), arrives from New York City and transfers into their school. Zack is immediately smitten with her, and broaches the subject with Dee of asking her out. Dee offers his blessing to Zack, unaware that this interracial pairing will start a chain effect of bad events.

Nut (Ron Johnson), a short fuse waiting to go off, is the first to hassle Zack. He has his own sights on Nikki, although she declines his persistant advances. However, she is thrilled when Zack asks her out for their first date. Nikki is cautious when she tells her mother, Marlene (Candy Ann Brown), about the impending night out. "He's different," is all she offers. They start the romance off slowly, neither one ever having dated outside their own race.

At a party, Zack's white friends embarrass Nikki and she runs off when his response isn't what she'd counted on. Meanwhile, Nut begins threatening Zack at every turn. They survive the inevitable hardships of their fledgling romance and start to forge a serious relationship, until Zack shows up at a local skating rink and finds Nikki being badgered by Nut. He confronts Nut who pulls out a handgun and begins shooting wildly. Dee ends up in the line of fire and is killed. After Dee's funeral, Zack returns to school only to find it a hotbed of racial tension waiting to explode. There will seemingly never be an end to this conflict.

This is not an action-packed picture. Instead, Drazan pulls the viewer in through consistently original dialogue and carefully drawn characters; the director also relies on the audience's familiarity with racial disharmony. Drazan doesn't try to offer solutions to the conflicts, choosing instead to put the issues on the table and let viewers figure out the answers for themselves. If a sense of helplessness pervades here, that was probably Drazen's intent. The brutal ending, while foreshadowed heavily, still arrives with a shock. In fact, it is clearly designed to increase the racial tension which hangs in the air from the first frame.

While Zack and Nikki may look at their romance as just two teenagers trying to find their own way in the world, many others harbor a much less enlightened view of miscegenation. It was daring for the helmsman to depic Zack as a white youth enamored of Black street culture, but this too works despite its possible exploitative aspects. The character can even be seen as non-racial, embodying qualities good and bad of all races.

Rapaport is a primary reason for the film's appeal. His performance as Zack is unerringly natural, never slipping into caricature. Wright is also well cast as Nikki. She is particularly strong in the scenes with Brown as her mother. Sharkey, while only in a few scenes, is fully plugged into his role. The supporting ensemble are generally up to the material. The musical score is superb, offering not only the expected rap tunes but also a wide variety of styles from classical to country and western.

When ZEBRAHEAD falters it is generally due to unfinished bits of business. The strained relationship between Zack and his father is the most glaringly evident example of this fate. Drazan allows for a buildup in tension to occur in the first reel, but pulls back causing their final confrontation to be forcefully but not credibly resolved. Some of the peripheral characters, while included to play devil's advocate for elements of the unfolding events, are needlessly in the way. The young demagogue who appears from time to time to spew forth racist rhetoric, while offering some comic relief, is unnecessary and only editorializes a story which can communicate its message without such obvious steering. The recurring motif of burning fires is just too surreal to be appreciated.

While ZEBRAHEAD may trip itself up on occasion, it is notable for its honest angle on the subject of race relations. Anthony Drazan is able to portray one small example of racial injustice and yet encompass feelings and emotions that go well beyond the story's locale. (Violence, profanity.) leave a comment