Jeux de pouvoir

I appreciate when a movie tries to break the conceptions of the audience. This shows that someone is trying to be smart and use the medium to express their own heartfelt views as well as entertain. Yet this movie has a serious problem: it tries to show a mirror world in which the roles of whites and blacks are reversed in order to show the injustice. Yet this movie doesn't have the sense to realize that when you use a stereotype in order to break it, you end up enforcing it. Travolta's character in this movie is not just your bog standard black man, it's representative of whites in the same class strata. Yes, there are white people who act just like he does in this movie. This is not behavior that is reserved solely for black people. And yet this is supposed to be an Alternate America?

Nonsense.

This movie is misinformed racewise. There are plenty of rich blacks and poor whites in this world. Turn it on Cops or any talk show and you'll see proof of the latter. To give us a morality play with the intent to shock us with things a lot of us in middle America see on a daily basis is lazy conception.

The movie fails on this level. Perhaps if it gave more thought to the classes instead of just using the race card (and actually looking more into their topic) it would be a good movie. But now, it's just a forgotten piece of tripe with a very limited and selectively cynical view of the world. And the world is lesser for it.