Movie review of

Friday, April 7th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

About halfway through the loosely scripted hip-hop study "Black and White," Mike Tyson stage-slaps Robert Downey Jr. so hard that the actor crumples like a piece of construction paper. In this scene and others, Iron Mike goes on to mutter and soliloquize his thoughts on revenge (best served cold), incarceration (not much fun) and other matters with a delivery so spontaneously smooth that you wonder why he hasn't previously given acting a go.

Mr. Tyson plays himself in the movie, a rambling, often silly and insightful, thoroughly entertaining story about upper-crust white teens in New York, who attach themselves like barnacles to the hull of hip-hop's allure.

Director James Toback has assembled the most bizarre cast of the year to speak dialogue mostly of their own creation: Members of the Wu-Tang Clan, Claudia Schiffer, Mr. Tyson, Jared Leto, Marla Maples, New York Knicks star Allan Houston, Ben Stiller and even Brooke Shields join in the fun, causing us to wonder what might happen if Mr. Toback were to start his own central casting agency.

For now, we'll have to settle for this examination of '90s racial identity politics, as played out by various factions of the hip-hop generation.

The story in "Black and White" is something of a shambles, but it seems to take a measure of delight in its disarray. Spoiled white girls (including Bijou Phillips and Gabby Hoffman) annoy their parents to no end by imitating the dress and talk of their hip-hop heroes. They also annoy their boyfriends (Elijah Wood and Eddie Thomas) by getting kinky with local rap stars Rich and Cigar (played by Wu-Tang family members Power and Raekwon).

Meanwhile, college hoops star Dean (Mr. Houston) gets in hot water with his grad student girlfriend Greta (Ms. Schiffer), a sleazy gambler (Mr. Stiller) and his old buddy Rich.

Just in case that sounds confusing, Ms. Shields plays a documentary filmmaker along to record it all for posterity, accompanied by her gay husband (Mr. Downey, whose pass at Mr. Tyson is rebuked with that wicked slap). Scorecards will not be handed out in the lobby, but Mr. Toback and friends do a fine job making a perverse kind of sense out of the who's-who of characters.

"Black and White" is shot without regard for blocking or other standard cinematic devices, an approach that succeeds in making everything feel oddly real. For every logical dilemma and clumsy plot maneuver, and there are quite a few, Mr. Toback delivers a bushel of emotional and geographical honesty (shot entirely on the streets of New York, "Black and White" has the verite feel of a travelogue that traverses both sides of the tracks).

It also refuses to take a real stand on the issue of white kids' culture-napping. With most of the actors substantially contributing to the development of their characters, "Black and White" exchanges coherence for verisimilitude in handing much of the show over to the players. Mr. Toback has experimented with improvisation before, most recently in "Two Girls and a Guy;" this time he dives in headfirst and adds just a smattering of scripted dialogue.

"Black and White" is at worst self-indulgent, at best uniquely unpredictable. In either case, it's great to see Tyson go against a real opponent again.