Black and White by Stephen Farber Given how many films are gorged with narration, it can be electrifying to encounter a movie that unfolds in the present tense without any external voice to provide strenuous analysis. That was one of the things that made The Insider so urgent. Although it told a complicated story, it didn't insult the audience's intelligence by imposing narration. James Toback's new movie, Black and White, follows in that tradition; it's the epitome of an experiential rather than an explicated movie. Toback plunges right into the action: the opening is a startling three-way sex scene between a black guy and two white girls in Central Park. From that point on, the movie briskly intercuts half a dozen storylines--about an aspiring rap group, a college basketball player who throws a game, a bunch of disgruntled white teenagers who wish they were black and a married couple who dabble in documentary filmmaking. Toback provides no authorial commentary to help us get our bearings. He aims to evoke the troubling, sometimes comical complexities of race in America, and to a large degree he succeeds. This partly improvised movie is a bit ragged at times, but it's also vital, immediate and often uproarious. An exciting, eclectic cast relishes the opportunity to create vivid characters and participate in a series of volatile dramatic moments. Among the standouts are Ben Stiller as a world-weary cop, Brooke Shields as the documentary director and Robert Downey Jr. as her gay husband who comes on to Mike Tyson in one hilarious scene. (Tyson also does a good job playing himself.) This movie doesn't provide the luxury of detachment; it forces us to sort out the confusing racial dramas of contemporary America, and it's far more involving because it has no narrator telling us what to feel. What did you think of this movie? Sound off in the Movie Forum.