Black & White & Red All Over

Although it was a deserving choice for Sundance 1997, there's little that's commercial about this somber, unsentimental, Cambridge-set tale of 20ish African-American friends -- five guys and one woman, who come completely apart in several days of mostly off-screen black-on-black violence -- jointly written and directed by three bursting-with-talent local filmmakers, Harry McCoy, Khari Streeter, and Demane Davis. The cast -- Thomas Braxton Jr., Lord Harrison, Naomi Ramsey, MyQuan, Damian, Rob Fiorestal, every one of them screen naturals -- hang out, watch too much TV, get perpetually high smoking "blunts," and bicker a bunch. As they settle on an apartment couch in Cambridge channel-surfing, they discover that a family has been shot dead in Roxbury by gang members. Two of the group look as if they might be involved: they deal dope, they secretly pack guns. Gradually even the most peaceful, job-ambitious of the group gets sucked into the off-camera cycle of violence.

The screenplay's too much on the talk-talk side, but it's smartly written and the actors have great ease playing it with conviction. Plaudits too to Jonathan Bekemeier's fine black-and-white cinematography and to David Steele for a vigorous original jazz score. At the Institute of Contemporary Art.

-- Gerald Peary