ZOOMAN is director Leon Ichaso's adaptation of Pulitzer Prize winner Charles Fuller's play about the impact of inner city violence.
Zooman (Khalil Kain) roams the streets of New York delivering a freewheeling monologue on his wild life. Meanwhile, Rachel Tate (Cynthia Martells) orders her daughter Jackie (Alyssa Ashely Nichols) out of the house. She goes out on the stoop. When Zooman spots an opponent in the crowded street, he
pulls out a gun and starts shooting, accidentally killing Jackie. Rueben Tate (Lou Gossett Jr.), Rachel's estranged husband, comes home to grieve, and police canvass the neighborhood for witnesses. No one admits to seeing a thing, although Jackie's older brother Victor (Hill Harper) hears the
murderer is named Zooman. For his part, Zooman is unrepentant, blaming the death on the girl being in the wrong place at the wrong time. "How'm I suppose to feel guilty about that?" he says.
Frustrated by the lack of witnesses, Victor decides to put up a sign on his house to shame his neighbors into talking. It reads: "The killers of our Jackie are free because our neighbors will not identity them."
The sign backfires, enraging most neighbors and attracting TV crews. Meanwhile, Victor gets a gun to kill Zooman. The night before the Jackie's memorial service, a brick crashes through the living room window. Victor rushes down with his gun, which his mother confiscates. She implores Rueben to
take down the sign, but he refuses. Soon after the tearful memorial service, Zooman returns to the 'hood. He checks out the sign but retreats when a neighbor confronts him. Later that night he returns and fires a shot at the sign. Victor comes out of the house, and Zooman aims his gun at him. Just
as he's about to pull the trigger, someone else in the neighborhood shoots him dead.
ZOOMAN's best moments rise from its title character's enraged, homeboy-Brechtian rants. Khalil Kain's disturbing portrait has a crazy charisma that benefits from Charles Fuller's caustic pen. On the home front, however, the Tates fall prey to that well-documented affliction of stage-to-movie
adaptations--stiffness. With much of the action confined to the house, and much of the dialogue confined to grief and justice, Ichaso's film cannot shed the shackles of the theater. His one other major problem is the conveniently ignored plotting glitch--if Victor knows Zooman killed his sister,
why does he not tell his own family? Still, thanks to the compelling conflict at its center, ZOOMAN almost triumphs despite its little inconsistencies. (Profanity, adult situations.) leave a comment
