The premise is interesting, but the execution fails to live up to any of its potential. White Man’s Burden imagines an America where black people are the ruling class and whites are underprivileged minorities. John Travolta stars as a factory worker who is fired after making a delivery to the house of the factory owner (Harry Belafonte) and accidentally peeping the man’s naked wife through a window. Now jobless and unable to support his family, his wife (Kelly Lynch) leaves him. In desperation he kidnaps Belafonte. The best part of the film is seeing African American actors filling the smaller, background roles that usually go to white actors (such as police officers and wealthy suburbanites), but the movie fails in its poorly thought-out ideas. Transposing the characters’ skin color out of the thinly veiled metaphor, John Travolta’s portrayal of the poor black man as violent and uneducated (but family oriented), combined with Belafonte’s rich white man as just and compassionate (and also family oriented), borders on being truly offensive. The fact that it’s helmed by an Asian American director, Desmond Nakano, only makes you wonder why Asian Americans are conspicuously absent (as are Hispanics) and where the heck they would fit into this world, anyway. –Andy Spletzer
Rating: 
Hailed by many critics as one of the best films of 1995, this finely tuned black comedy sparked a renewed interest in movies based on books by prolific crime novelist Elmore Leonard, whose trademark combination of tight plotting and sharp humor is perfectly captured here. After the success of Pulp Fiction, John Travolta continued his meteoric comeback as Chili Palmer, a Mob “mechanic” whose latest assignment takes him to Los Angeles, where his fascination with the movie business turns into a new career as a would-be movie producer. He pitches ideas with a sleazy producer (Gene Hackman) and a major star (Danny DeVito), and also finds time to deal with a vengeful Mobster (Dennis Farina) and assorted Hollywood types (including Renee Russo and Delroy Lindo) who all want their piece of a tempting show-biz pie. The plot unfolds with enticing precision, but it’s really Elmore’s snappy dialogue–and the performances that bring it to life–that make this one of the best comedies of the 1990s. –Jeff Shannon