`Rage In Harlem' Loses Itself As Misfired Comedy

X 1/2 "A Rage in Harlem," with Forest Whitaker, Gregory Hines, Robin Givens, Zakes Mokae, Danny Glover. Directed by Bill Duke, from a script by John Toles-Bey and Bobby Crawford. Alderwood, Broadway Market, Crossroads, Lewis & Clark, Kirkland Parkplace, Oak Tree Cinemas. "R" - Restricted, due to violence, language. ------------------------------------------------------------ Zakes Mokae spends much of "A Rage in Harlem" in drag - and reveling in it. The South African actor, best-known for his serious stage work in Athol Fugard's plays and his screen roles in "A Dry White Season" and "Cry Freedom," has a marvelous time playing Big Kathy, an outrageous transvestite who runs a Harlem brothel in the 1950s.

Danny Glover, who's also in a lighter mood than usual, turns up as a goofy crime boss named Easy Money, who's more attached to his dog than to any human. Forest Whitaker uses his heft to play a 1950s nerd who worships Jesus and his dead mother about equally, and Robin Givens is cast as a fugitive who finds his innocence irresistibly sexy.

With its snazzy Elmer Bernstein score, its snappy period flavor and its all-star cast doing something completely different, "A Rage in Harlem" should have been much more fun than it is.

Alas, there's a surfeit of throat-slitting and other violence in this misfired comedy, and the director, Bill Duke, isn't swift enough to keep the brutality from getting in the way of the laughs. A veteran of "Miami Vice," he's making his debut as a big-screen director, and he uses the opportunity to do a lot of things he couldn't get past the network censors.

The result is a movie that will probably play better on television, when the R-rated realism of its violence is toned down and the funny moments won't be forced to compete with it.

Based on a novel by Chester Himes, "A Rage in Harlem" is supposed to be a grandiose comic fable about a stolen chest of gold, the gangsters in pursuit of it and the Whitaker character's transformation by the fugitive who took off with the fortune (Givens).

"Himes' characters always surprise the reader," claims Duke. "Bad guys turn out to be good guys, and good guys turn out a little bit bad." Unfortunately, these reversals are so poorly suggested that the movie just seems tiresomely schizoid.