Rosewood

In 1923, Rosewood, a prosperous, mostly black town in Florida, was razed by the white inhabitants of the adjacent, less affluent, all-white town of Sumner. By the end of several days of savagery, an unknown number of people had been raped and murdered, and the town was wiped from the face of the earth, an atrocity that would be covered up for 70 years.

John Singleton, whose uncompromising and naturalistic Boyz N the Hood earned him an Oscar nomination, deserves credit for bringing this little-known abomination to the big screen. Unfortunately, his ambitions extend beyond the already overwhelming material, and the result wavers from To Kill a Mockingbird to Schindler's List, with Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name or Josie Wales lurking in the background.

That role is played by the massive Ving Rhames, aptly named Mr. Mann. Mounted on a huge steed, great-coated, mouthing a cheroot, he's an iconic sight. But he's lost in a confused series of events that begins with Jon Voight with his pants down, his bare butt bobbing above a teenage girl. He's John Wright, the benevolently exploitative local store owner. Cut to Fanny Taylor (Loren Dean) getting beaten up by her white lover; he flees, for some reason, to a black Masonic lodge, where he seeks refuge and is never seen again.

To avoid trouble with her husband, Fanny claims that she was assaulted by a black man (a Mockingbird reference; too bad that in this O.J. era the person held responsible for the whole mess is a blonde, battered white woman). Despite the feeble attempts by Sheriff Walker (Michael Rooker), everybody in Sumner gets drunk and sets out for Rosewood. What follows is a relentless orgy of lynching, burning, and mutilation (what's especially grotesque is that children are both victims and witnesses) reminiscent of the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia or the tribal slaughter of Rwanda. At first it's unwatchable, and then numbing.

Singleton doesn't deal only in black and white; he makes it clear that the crackers of Sumner hate their neighbors not just because of their race but because they're middle class. Neither does he demonize all whites. A squad of armed white volunteers sends the Sumner rabble back home when they try to export their barbarity to another town.

As for Rhames's imposing but seemingly impotent Mann, he tries to justify his grand entrance by teaming up with a contrite Wright to commandeer a train and rescue survivors. The implausibility of such heroics rests uneasily with the savagery that comes before. Still, in its honest depiction of the horror of racism, Rosewood should be seen. That very honesty is also the reason no one will want to see it. At the Copley Place, the Fresh Pond, and the Chestnut Hill and in the suburbs.

-- Peter Keough