Review: Ragtime
A sprawling look
at New York in the early 1900s, with an eventual focus on African-American
piano player Coalhouse Walker Jr. (Howard Rollins Jr.), who arrives on the
doorstep of a white couple (rigid James Olson and the warm-hearted Mary
Steenburgen) to reconcile with his beloved Sarah (Debbie Allen), whom the
couple have taken in, along with her baby. Apparently Coalhouse abandoned them,
but he claims he did so because he needed to go away and make money to support
them. Unfortunately the reunion is to be short-lived due to tragedy. Coalhouse
is already incensed that some racist white firemen (led by Kenneth McMillan)
have vandalised his car and there isn’t a damn thing he can do about it, so
that this latest tragedy sends him right over the edge and he takes drastic
measures to demand compensation for
the vandalising of his car or else! This involves Coalhouse and his newly
formed band of brothers holing themselves up in a local library building and
claim to have rigged the place w…