Amos & Andrew

Amos & Andrew is a 1993 American buddy action-comedy film directed and written by E. Max Frye and starring Nicolas Cage and Samuel L. Jackson.

Shot in and around Wilmington, North Carolina in 1992, the film concerns wealthy African-American playwright Andrew Sterling's (Jackson) purchase of a summer home on a predominantly white island and the problems that arise when he is mistaken for a criminal.

Andrew Sterling, a successful black urbanite playwright, buys a vacation home on a resort island in Massachusetts.

To avoid the bad publicity, Tolliver offers Amos Odell, a thief in his jail, a deal: he will be granted free passage out of town if he breaks into Andrew's home, holds the writer hostage, and gives himself up.

Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars, writing that Amos & Andrew "is not bad so much as misguided" due to its comedic treatment of issues such as racism, racial injustice and police brutality, suggesting that "the movie needs to be either more innocent about race in America, or less.

"[2] In 2016, Nathan Rabin wrote, "for two surprisingly solid acts at least, Amos & Andrew is a sometimes scathing, sometimes funny exploration of the intersection of class and race and the way racism works in our society that feels like it could have been ripped from today’s headlines" but that "the film’s deflating third act largely eschews satire and social commentary for the much cheaper, more audience-friendly terrain of the plot-driven mismatched buddy comedy.

That’s a shame, because in its early going, Amos and Andrew is unusually incisive in its depiction of the intersection of class and race, especially for a studio comedy.