THE TENANTS (2005)

THE TENANTS, based on a Bernard Malamud novel, examines the animus between Jews and African Americans in the incendiary atmosphere of 70s’ Brooklyn. Harry Lesser (Dylan McDermott) is a Jewish novelist laboring to finish a novel 10 years into the writing. Convinced that he must complete it in the same environment where it was started, Harry is the sole tenant in a condemned Brooklyn tenement. Enter another writer – a Black militant anti-Semite named Willie Spearmint (Snoop Dogg). The two form a tenuous relationship based on Harry’s offer to help the nascent writer, but his well intentioned critiques of the Willie's stories about death to all white people create escalating conflict. And then when Harry starts an affair with Willie's white Jewish girlfriend (Rose Byrne, currently co-starring with Glenn Close in a terrific TV series, “Damages”), all hell breaks loose. The explosive, inevitable end to all this reveals the slippery nature of the human condition, and the human capacity for violence and undoing.