There are all kinds of men on the bus. The tour leader (Charles S. Dutton) will be an inspiration and a referee. Another steadying hand is supplied by the oldest man on board, Jeremiah (Ossie Davis), a student of black history who delights in informing white cowboys that a black cowboy invented steer wrestling.

Also on board are a father (Thomas Jefferson Byrd) and his young son (DeAundre Bonds), who have been shackled together by a court order; the irony of going to the march in chains is not lost on the others. An ex-Marine (Isaiah Washington), who is gay, boards the bus with his lover (Harry Lennix) and they're singled out for persecution by a homophobic would-be actor (Andre Braugher). And a light-skinned man (Roger Guenveur Smith) is revealed as a cop assigned to South Central. Then there's a UCLA film student (Hill Harper), who is shooting a video documentary. And a member of the Nation of Islam (Gabriel Casseus), in black suit, bow tie and dark glasses, who says not one word during the journey.

During the course of the trip, conversations will be philosophical, humorous, sad, nostalgic, angry and sometimes very personal. The homosexual couple provokes the hostility of the gay-hater; prejudice knows no color line. That's true, too, in the attitudes toward the cop, whose skin is so light that he could pass for white, and who, it is revealed, became a cop in part because his black father, also a cop, was killed ("yes,” he says, "by a brother”).

"The man says he's black, he's black,” pronounces Ossie Davis. But then the cop himself is revealed to have blinkers on. Another man reveals he's a former gang member, "cripping since I smoked a guy on my 13th birthday,” but that now he does social work with "kids at risk.” No matter; the cop warns him: "When we get back to L.A., I'm going to have to arrest you.”

For many white people, a distressing element of the Million Man March was the racial slant of its convener, Louis Farrakhan, who has made many anti-Semitic and anti-white slurs. Lee could have ducked this area, but doesn't. When the bus breaks down, the replacement driver (Richard Belzer) is a Jewish man who keeps quiet as long as he can, then speaks out about Farrakhan's libels against Jews. "At least my parents did their part,” he says; they were civil-rights activists. He cites Farrakhan's statements that Judaism is a "gutter religion” and "Hitler was a great man.” After some of the tour members recycle old clichés about Jewish landlords, the Belzer character says, "I wouldn't expect you to drive a bus to a Klan meeting,” and walks away from the bus at a rest stop. Dutton takes over driving.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46gnK1ln6N6tbTEZpmuq11mhnqC