Rosewood

For most of its nearly 2 1/2 hours, "Rosewood" is a compelling if uneven look at a real-life tragedy. The film is based on a true incident that occurred in Florida in 1923, when a white mob burned down a black town after a white woman claimed to have been raped by a black stranger.

By the sheer force of its shocking storyline, and with energetic direction by John Singleton ("Boyz N the Hood," "Poetic Justice"), "Rosewood" carries the audience along, despite a couple of uneven performances and a script from first-timer Gregory Poirier that is padded out with soap opera machinations.

It is in the end, however, that Singleton and Poirier really overplay their hand, trivializing a stirring drama by allowing it to de-te-ri-o-rate into an old-fashioned shoot-'em-up.

It is the early 1920s and "Rosewood," a small, poverty-stricken town in Florida, is just beginning to prosper. But racial tension is thick, as the bigoted white "crackers" who live round about use and abuse their relationships with the black majority.

Most of the white characters are mean, nasty and easy to despise. But it's a bit more difficult to get an accurate bead on shopkeeper John Wright (Jon Voight, who spends a lot of time staring off into space). Wright was widowed only seven months earlier and he has a loyal second wife, though she is troubled by her husband's aloofness and the fact that his two sons won't accept her. Wright, meanwhile, thinks nothing of having sex with the young black sales clerk in his store, and he blindly considers himself a friend to the black community.

Despite his top billing, however, Voight's role is the second lead in what is obviously intended to be an ensemble effort.

Towering above everyone else is Ving Rhames ("Dave," "Pulp Fiction," "Mission: Impossible"), quite good in his first leading part as Mr. Mann, an outsider who rides into town on horseback and is revealed to be a World War I veteran with money in his pocket and a desire to settle down.

Other pivotal characters include Sarah (the always excellent Esther Rolle), the community's mother figure, who knows everyone and everything that's going on in town; her son Sylvester (the electric Don Cheadle), an educated music teacher who plays a tinny piano in the living room of their crowded household; and Scrappie, a shy but outspoken 17-year-old schoolteacher who is played as charmingly fragile by Elise Neal. (Scrappie's tentative romance with Mann is one of the film's genuine highlights.)

The plot kicks in when the town floozy, a white woman (Catherine Kellner) whose husband (Loren Dean) works in the local saw mill, tries to cover up a liaison that turned violent. Not wanting her husband to see her bruises and welts, she screams rape - and claims it was a black man she'd never seen before who raped and beat her. Sarah is witness to the lie, but she keeps quiet, little realizing what lies ahead.

This gets the sheriff (Michael Rooker) and half the town, led by super-bigot Duke (Bruce McGill), into a frenzy that gradually leads to a series of beatings, shootings and lynchings. And in the end, they burn down the town.

Wright finds his allegiances torn, and Mann hits the road. But eventually, they team up to help women and children who have been hiding in the swamp board a train and get out of town.

That Voight's despicable character (though admittedly much less despicable than his neighbors) takes on the role of an American "Schindler" is bad enough, but Rhames' character turns into a combination of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood (think "The Commancheros" crossed with "Hang 'Em High"). And in the end, he rides to the rescue, picking off rednecks with his rifle as if they were Indians in a bad '40s Western (right down to the driver of a buckboard falling from his wagon and rolling down a hill).

In many ways this seems like the miscalculation of an immature filmmaker - and not just because Singleton is still in his 20s. It's one thing to have a couple of performances go south and to leave a few plot points underdeveloped, but it's quite another to rely so heavily on broad cinematic cliches, and especially to allow a serious commentary on a horrifying piece of American history to play out as an adolescent fantasy.

"Rosewood" is rated R for considerable violence and gore, graphic sex, some brief nudity, profanity and vulgarity.