Grand Canyon (1991)

Director: Lawrence Kasdan

Writers: Lawrence Kasdan, Meg Kasdan

Composer: James Newton Howard

Starring: Danny Glover, Kevin Kline, Steve Martin, Mary McDonnell, Mary-Louise Parker, Alfre Woodard, Jeremy Sisto, Tina Lifford, Patrick Malone, Randle Mell, Sarah Trigger

More info: IMDb

Tagline: In a city on the edge, six people are about to discover something extraordinary...each other.

Plot: Grand Canyon revolved around six residents from different backgrounds whose lives intertwine in modern-day Los Angeles. At the center of the film is the unlikely friendship of two men from different races and classes brought together when one finds himself in jeopardy in the other's rough neighborhood.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

The cast is great.  You can't go wrong with Glover, Kline, Martin, etc..  Kasdan's direction is good as are the other technical aspects but there's no getting around how the picture feels from the story's standpoint and how it's handled.  Now the opening 17 minutes that takes up through the end of Mack's (Kline) car breaking down in a rough part of L.A. where he meets Simon (Glover) has some good tension and it's a great way for these two characters to meet and it makes it easy to see why Mack needs to get to know Simon on a personal level.  The story goes places that aren't so bad but when I was finished with the film I didn't feel the emotional punch the picture was going for.  Then it hit me.  This is a film about race from a rich, white man's perspective living in Hollywood and it's written and directed by a white man who works and (probably) lives in Hollywood.  So I gathered that the target audience for this, where it would play most effectively, is rich, white people living in Hollywood (or more simply, rich, white people).  Then it made perfect sense.  That's not to say that you have to be in that demographic to enjoy it but I think that you'd largely have to be in order to get the most from this picture.  The 20th Century Fox DVD presents the film in anamorphic widescreen and the extras you get are the theatrical trailer (also anamorphic widescreen), a 6 minute featurette (fullscreen) and trailer for five other films that you might like since you're watching this movie.