‘Riot’: Honorable Attempt to Revisit Horror of ’92

The entire city worried and trembled. Yet only those who were there know what it was like to experience the epicenter of the Los Angeles riots that flamed five years ago after the first trial of four white cops in the savage beating of speeding black motorist Rodney King.

In that regard, Showtime’s “Riot” is a South-Central “Rashomon,” an honorable attempt to revisit the convulsive, agonizing, nightmarish moment from contrasting, even clashing racial perspectives.

Driven by strong writing and fine acting, Sunday’s “Riot” is scorching and provocative, using April 29, 1992, to symbolize the social, class and ethnic fault-lines that for years have fractured Los Angeles. It boldly crosses a perilous minefield that TV, with only a few exceptions, has timidly avoided, expressing views as divergent as real-life attitudes concerning what happened that day.

Then on Tuesday, the anniversary of the city’s post-trial thunderclap, Showtime airs “South Central Los Angeles: Inside Voices,” a distinctively earthy, low-budget, high-impact documentary from independent filmmaker Maxi Cohen offering intimate views of this neighborhood and its oft-reported troubles through the lenses of white, black, Asian and Latino videographers, most of whom either have lived or worked there. Much of this worthwhile, personal-style, inside-out documentary was shot shortly after the civil unrest and, without trying to excuse the turmoil, probes for its causes in conditions that prevail in South-Central, as well as in rigid mind-sets.

European viewers have already heard “Inside Voices.” Rejected by U.S. television, it was financed by funds from French and German TV and only later acquired by Showtime, which shelved it for several years before scheduling it as a fifth anniversary commemoration.

Although it should have been aired sooner, it’s still highly relevant and in no way dated. Slow to get started, the 90-minute film soon has you adjusting to its rhythms, including tales of ethnic hostilities that in some ways parallel “Riot.”

Amnesiacs hoping to wipe this painful history from their memories won’t welcome either program. Nor, possibly, will those who believe that television, instead of raking over still-oozing wounds, should do more to unite Los Angeles by focusing on positives that don’t potentially reinforce stereotypes.

It’s a perilous high wire for “Riot” executive producers Harry Winer and Judy Polone, given that many Angelenos cannot agree even on a definition of the urban meltdown that followed the stunning Simi Valley verdict acquitting the four LAPD officers. (Their retrial on federal charges a year later resulted in convictions against Stacy Koon and Laurence Powell for violating King’s civil rights.)

Did the widespread violence, looting and destructive mayhem constitute riots or elements of an uprising?

Given the absence of consensus on such a fiery topic, it’s no wonder that “Riot” met mixed reviews when publicly screened recently at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, with some in the racially mixed audience accusing it of nourishing a stereotype of South-Central as entirely a gangbanging junior Beirut, and others fearing it would increase racial tensions.

Whatever the case, this dark chapter of L.A. history spoke for itself in 1992, and now in “Riot” again resonates powerfully during four separately written stories about characters whose lives intersect tragically amid the frightening chaos and nonstop heat. Weaving famous pictures of King getting flogged and actual news footage of the mayhem into these individual stories gives them an extra dimension of harrowing reality.

Everything in “Riot” points not to an uprising against perceived oppression but to something spontaneous and impulsive in the intense sizzle of the moment--the verdict a flamethrower that ignites a tinderbox of community anger and frustration. “Riot” is about long-simmering resentment boiling over, with even ordinary, law-abiding people being swept up, adrenaline pumping, in the contagion of mob psychology and rage.

A segment written and directed by Galen Yuen opens “Riot” mightily as a small South-Central liquor store operated by the Korean American Lee family becomes first a generational battlefield between headstrong young Jeff (Dante Basco) and his Old World father (Mako) and later a casualty of rioters. “Stand by me,” his father urges him. What follows is especially indelible, with Jeff suppressing his pride and joining his father and mother (Kieu Chinh) as they helplessly beg the looters speeding by them to “take what you need, don’t burn our store.”

Next comes the Latino segment, written by the late Joe Vasquez and directed by Alex Munoz, which finds Manuel Alvarado (Douglas Spain), youngest son of a mostly upstanding but poor family, and his girlfriend, Iris (Yelba Osorio), getting caught up in the riots and looting. Although it stretches credibility that Iris, in an atmosphere of such frantic urgency, would take the time to try on a dress in an abandoned shop swarmed by looters, an intense energy effectively pushes the story toward its bloody conclusion.

Chastised on the street by Iris for stealing, Manuel’s friend Carlos (Alexis Cruz) tightly embraces his loot and responds exuberantly: “Today is the greatest day in my life, man! For one day I came out a winner!”

In another segment, meanwhile, writer-director Richard DiLello relives this day through the eyes of white LAPD officer Boomer McCay (Luke Perry), who knows his fellow cops “lost it” when they clobbered King and protests when some of his colleagues shout obscenities and racial insults at TV footage of the beating. Yet he, too, is swept up in the chaos, ultimately finding himself encircled by an angry crowd being driven by emotions, a situation that DiLello equates (using too heavy a hand, unfortunately) with baton-swinging cops surrounding King.

Written and directed by David C. Johnson, the final segment is an African American view of verdict day, with Turner Coates (Mario Van Peebles), his beauty-shop owner mother, Maggie (Cicely Tyson), and their old friend, store owner Vernon (Mario’s father, Melvin Van Peebles), being endangered by other blacks.

A San Fernando Valley resident who happens to be visiting his mother in his old Crenshaw neighborhood when the verdict is announced, Turner comes to the rescue of a Latino family being attacked in their car by blacks, who turn out to be some of Turner’s old friends. “We ain’t got no more cheeks to turn, brother,” one tells him.

Then Turner rushes off to help Vernon, as the melee and its hysteria becoming especially frightful to Maggie, reviving memories of the 1965 Watts riots that killed her husband.

“Riot” offers no rationale for what happened that day. In each of these stories, good people are influenced and in some cases even herded by powerful forces they cannot control and could not have anticipated. It’s a view of history that will not be universally applauded, but it’s a worthy one that is told rewardingly.

* “Riot” airs Sunday at 8 p.m. and again Tuesday at 9:45 p.m. on Showtime. “South Central Los Angeles: Inside Voices” airs at 11:30 p.m. Tuesday on Showtime.