Higher Learning is a film, like a couple of other 90's ones, I wish I had seen many years earlier. At first, you wonder where the story's going, but the more it progresses, you begin to see there's something special going on here, where Singleton had made something more than a movie here. What we have are a collection of characters, collegiate students, with their own drama's, and cuttingly real life problems, which of course might seem very cliché'd, but it's how the characters react off each other, especially when again, it's racial conflict, in a movie which again pits black against whites, some of it done discreetly. The two standout performances are that of sick loner student, Rappaport, studying engineering, who has some really bad wiring, and when a Nazi militant group befriend him, they send him down a real killer path. The other great performance is that of Fishburne, as a kind of smug, African literature teacher, who tells it like it is. His character was bl..dy interesting, not stereotypical. Of course, there are predictabilite's in the film, like one outcome, you'll see miles off, but the intent of the film is there, with a few beneficial messages, where you as the viewer, will do some learning yourselves. Not many films are like this, and Singleton has made a film, which has sadly, been heavily and unjustly criticized, yet though, it stands apart from his others. It's a shame, more viewers can't see the real beauty and special self to this powerful drama, with some powerful performances, no more than that of the scary Rappaport.

Having over fifteen years of space away from this film, watching it again makes me realize how utterly disconnected from reality this film is. The characters are stereotypes, the college campus is nothing like reality, and the whole affair screams 'Do the Right Thing' but without any real understanding about what that really entails. Spike Lee's film had a lot of valid points and understood the nature of racism and portrayed it brilliantly. This film just takes pleasure in reducing everybody to stereotypes, tossing in an education spiel that would make Bill Cosby roll his eyes, and basically just waste the audience's time and money.But it does have value. The movie attempts to portray America as a land seething with anxiety and bitterness over social norms breaking and bursting. But it's a childish movie in that it wants to be revolutionary without really knowing what it's trying to do. Why does rape equal becoming a lesbian? How does being dismissed by a bunch of black men immediately follow into racism? Huh? What is going on in this movie? And we'll never know. Higher Learning is a product of the '90s. If anything, it shows how we cannot judge history while we are living it. It's a bad clone of Do The Right Thing and is ultimately pointless and meaningless. If anything, it serves as a very good warning about moralizing in cinema: you better be damn sure you make something that, even if proved wrong, proves a point. If not, you're just making Sid Davis films with better stock.

I won't argue with the fact that this is a great movie about racial tension, but I will argue with the fact that the Black Panthers are portrayed as better or more sympathetically than the Skinheads. Anyone that argues different is a victim of a false liberal bias. The fact is, for those of you who watch Higher Learning with an open mind to the facts of life, both sides of the conflict are portrayed as equally repugnant. Higher Learning makes a serious effort to take no sides in its portrayal of racism in America and it is an effort that pays off in spades. It is a solid piece of honest cinema and one with a valid point. Although, the film could have done without a half-hearted homage to the UT Austin tragedy. A movie of this caliber should have had a more original ending.

For some reason I thought this was going to be a goofy college movie but it isn't at all. It truly is an ensemble cast with no clear "main character", because the stories involved all of them.Omar Epps is Malik, at college on a partial scholarship as a track athlete. He has a giant chip on his shoulder and has trouble adjusting.Kristy Swanson is the freshman away from home, Kristen Connor, and needing to learn much to cope with this new college life.Michael Rapaport is Remy from Idaho, lonely and easily influenced, and gets pulled into a group of white supremacist skinheads.Jennifer Connelly is Taryn, borderline lesbian and one that identifies with "causes."My favorite is Laurence Fishburne as Political Science Professor Maurice Phipps, very "Morpheus-like" before he became Morpheus in "The Matrix". It was funny hearing him talk to students about "the real world", a term we hear so often in "The Matrix." But in a good way.Among the others in the cast were Ice Cube, Tyra Banks, Cole Hauser, Regina King, and Busta Rhymes.This is not a delicate movie. It has date rape, ethnic struggles, murder, and suicide. But it is a movie that holds your attention.MAJOR SPOILER: This is the movie where Rapaport as Remy wants to be accepted by his skinhead friends and, egged on, he gets a rifle and decides to snipe from a roof top and kill a black person. He ends up killing two students, one of them the girlfriend (Tyra Banks) of Malik. Later, cornered, Remy puts a pistol in his mouth and kills himself.