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 GREAT mature,cutting-edge drama!!! Jan 12, 2009
I love this gutsy indy flick about race-relations,urban crime maladies and"taboo"romantic aspirations..The(very true-to-life)segment touching on young men candidly discussing racial(sexual)sterotypes was an excellent touch! This movie features a good(hyper-sensitive)plot and VERY good acting throughout..However what really was the"clincher"for me as far as liking this flick was that it featured a lot of Detroit landmarks that were seen and/or frequented by me regularly as a proud life-long Detroit resident!! Cody Highschool(where the movies school-scenes take place is within walking distance of my house,and "SkateLand"skating rink on the eastside where the fatal shooting took place(And ironically where a LOT of Detroiters used to get"popped"!!)and those empty fields where one can set the natural gas-leaks afire appears to be in my absolute favorite neighborhood in Detroit:"Delray... I always enjoy seeing my city on the silver screen...But this movies' sensitive topic and emotional/realistic acting would've been a SOLID movie even if it was filmed on location in Toledo Ohio,Muskegon Michigan or Gary Indiana!! Overall a really great"no-holds-barred"mature,little-known movie!!
 Mixed response, some strong points though overall Jul 22, 2008
Film Critic AS a primer on race relations, what makes Zebrahead unique, and uniquely fascinating, is its point-of-view. The film begins with an assumption largely ignored in the works of Spike Lee or John Singleton - a belief that young white Americans are being heavily influenced by urban black culture, by the music and the language and the dress, by the mania of Arsenio Hall and the magic of Michael Jordan. So the script takes an admittedly extreme example of that influence - a white teen-ager reared in the predominantly black environs of Detroit - and examines the implications. Can cultural conditioning yield tolerance and empathy as readily as it generates prejudice and hate?
The question itself is hopeful, and the movie delivers a complex answer with subtlety and style. Making his feature debut, writer-director Anthony Drazan has done his homework well - he too is the product of a "culturally mixed" background, and a man with an obvious zest for research. Shooting over 60 hours of video footage in New York City high schools, Drazan used that raw material as the basis for his fictional screenplay, changing the setting to the urban fringes of the Motor City and finding his alter ego in the youthful character of Zack (Michael Rapaport), a Jewish kid who, by sheer dint of exposure, is "more on the home-boy side than the white-boy side."
The result is a vibrant picture that, from the rough dialogue to the hip-hop soundtrack, from the electronic "hall-monitors" to the washroom crackheads, resonates with the ring of truth. Certainly, for Zack, his "home-boy" side is not an assumed pose but a nurtured fact - he naturally loves the music that flows around him; his best friend is black because so are many of his classmates; ditto for Nikki (N'Bushe Wright), the new girl in town, the one with the sassy manner and the sweet smile. When Zack and Nikki go out on a Saturday night, it feels natural, inevitable. Of course, that single date becomes the pebble tossed in the pond, and the rest of the film traces the tragic ripples.
The revealed patterns are intriguing. The fortysomethings, the teen- agers' parents and teachers, are wholly incapable of viewing the relationship through anything but a racial lens. Some are more laissez faire than others - Zack's philandering dad (Ray Sharkey) seems to have transcended bigotry by abandoning any emotion - but all are fearful, pessimistic. The same is largely true of the kids' peers, yet there are a few telling exceptions - young adults who, as a way of life, not as a matter of principle, have genuinely broken through the colour barrier. It may be sentimental to argue, as the film does, that hope rests with the young. But it's not sentimental to show exactly how and why. Despite some small flaws (a few too many plot complications and a recurring visual image that seems tacked on), that's Drazan's real triumph here - within the turmoil and the tragedy he explores, there emerges a glint of hope that doesn't smack of wishful thinking.
And hope breeds hope. One wants to believe that, by extension, the glint can become a beacon, and that a racially mixed high-school can double as an educational microcosm - a troubled hotspot that grows the seeds of a solution from within the very problems it creates. Yes, one dearly wants to believe, and Zebrahead gives us a reason. Conrad Alton, Filmbay Editor.
Little known and underrated film Apr 01, 2008
Take Save The Last Dance minus the dance and do a role reversal and you get ZebraHead. This movie which touches on interracial dating was one of the best little seen films of 1992. Micheal Rappot as Zack proved his leading man stauts at early age in this powerful film. I think if the film were released today it'd be just as powerful.
This is a great movie taken in Detroit Mi Jan 27, 2008
This is a great race related movie and shows the great and bad times And who could not fall in love with NICKY
0 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 To View Again Jan 09, 2007
I saw this movie when it first aired, wanted my kids to see it as well,
touch on social aspect in america.
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