The American college campus (fictitious Columbus U., after Christopher, not the city in Ohio) as microcosmic melting pot. Or better, boiling pot, with little actual melting taking place. Racial and ethnic separatism; feminism; neo-Nazism; competitive athletics; dormitory stereo wars; date rape; sexual disorientation; etc. Those who were overhasty about exalting John Singleton into a Boy Orson Welles (youngest man ever to be nominated as Best Director blah blah) here get exactly what they deserve, a movie of rampaging immaturity -- artistically, dramatically, never mind politically. Really the movie is more diagrammatic than dramatic. The multiple characters -- the ones you can keep straight anyhow -- are never more than factional representatives, and often less. It would be surprising, for example, if Singleton were to have any inside knowledge of a cabal of white-supremacist skinheads, but only a little imagination, only a little tact, would be needed to avoid the world's worst Brando imitator, the generic nostril-flaring muscleman, and the exaggerating low-angle cameras and wide-angle lenses. On the other hand, the imperious Poli-Sci professor -- a bearded Laurence Fishburne, serving the role-model function he served also in Singleton's Boyz n the Hood -- would suggest a lack of inside knowledge of even a college classroom. Certainly he is too awesome and remote a figure to stand as the sole representative of today's faculty. He, however, is at least the vehicle to some of the more universal plagues of contemporary academe -- inability to spell, to punctuate, to think independently. But Singleton can focus no more than a glance or two, not a fully formed subplot, much less the main plot, on mundanities such as those, before rushing on to the ready-made material of tense face-offs between students and cops, a slow-motion rumble between rival factions, and (big climax) a rooftop sniper. So much for independent thought! With Omar Epps, Kristy Swanson, Michael Rapaport, Ice Cube. (1995) — Duncan Shepherd
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