Featuring an ensemble cast, the film is about random events affecting a diverse group of people, exploring the race- and class-imposed chasms which separate members of the same community.

After attending a Lakers basketball game, an immigration lawyer named Mack finds himself at the mercy of potential muggers when his car breaks down in a bad part of Los Angeles late at night.

Davis suddenly becomes interested in philosophy rather than box-office profits after being shot in the leg by a man trying to steal his watch, vowing to devote the remainder of his career to eliminating violence from the cinema.

In the end, they visit the Grand Canyon on a shared vacation trip, united in a place that is philosophically and actually "bigger" than all their little separate lives.

Rita Kempley, in her film review in The Washington Post, pointed to this scene as proof that "... the filmmaker and his team ha[d] truly caught society on the verge.

[8]Washington Post critic Rita Kempley wrote, Grand Canyon considers the ever-widening chasms that divide us, the shifting demographic fault lines that have set society quaking like the needle on Richter's scale.

[9]Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly chided the film for its "... solemn zeitgeist chic," and called it "... way too self-conscious," but ultimately decided that "Grand Canyon is finally a very classy soap opera, one that holds a generous mirror up to its audience's anxieties.

[citation needed] Phil Collins' 1993 song "Both Sides of the Story" references the scene from Grand Canyon where the young mugger tells Simon (played by Danny Glover) that he carries a gun to make sure people respect (and fear) him.