After losing their mothers at a young age, Diamond and her closest cousins, Tia and Tara, known as "Sisters", are willing to do anything to keep their grandmother from dying of cancer and save their family.
Malcolm is carefully surviving life in a tough neighborhood in Los Angeles while juggling college applications, academic interviews, and the SAT. A chance invitation to an underground party leads him into an adventure that could allow him to go from being a geek, to being dope, to ultimately being himself.
Los Angeles, 1949. Ruthless, Brooklyn-born mob king Mickey Cohen runs the show in this town, reaping the ill-gotten gains from the drugs, the guns, the prostitutes and — if he has his way — every wire bet placed west of Chicago. And he does it all with the protection of not only his own paid goons, but also the police and the politicians who are under his control. It’s enough to intimidate even the bravest, street-hardened cop… except, perhaps, for the small, secret crew of LAPD outsiders led by Sgt. John O’Mara and Jerry Wooters who come together to try to tear Cohen’s world apart.
Avery (Jones) returns to college as a competitive swimmer after getting his life back on track. But his life takes another unexpected turn when he and his two friends (Bonds, Casseus) are wrongly accused of murder and end up in prison.
Two brothers turn against each other when confronted with the possibility of getting millions of dollars found in a stolen armored car.
Brian Hooks plays a character who is just released from jail. And the state adopts a "3 strikes" rule for felons that involves serious penalties. Hooks has 2 strikes, and wants to change his life for the better. When a friend picks him up, they are pulled over, and his friend shoots at police officers, and Hooks escapes. Now Hooks, a wanted man, must clear his name of having nothing to do with the shooting.
In the panicky, uncertain hours before his wedding, a groom with prenuptial jitters and his two best friends reminisce about growing up together in the middle-class African-American neighborhood of Inglewood, California. Flashing back to the twenty-something trio's childhood exploits, the memories capture the mood and nostalgia of the '80s era.
Several Black men take a cross-country bus trip to attend the Million Man March in Washington, DC in 1995. On the bus are an eclectic set of characters including a laid-off aircraft worker, a man whose at-risk son is handcuffed to him, a black Republican, a former gangsta, a Hollywood actor, a cop who is of mixed racial background, and a white bus driver. All make the trek discussing issues surrounding the march, including manhood, religion, politics, and race.