Joy, prosperity and happiness are all right in the palm of his hands-only to slip through his fingers like grains of sand when a routine traffic stop ends in tragedy. Kevin wrestles with the illusions and promises that directed the flow of his life. He has done everything a man should and yet the person that mattered most no longer stood by his side.

Making matters even worse, the legal system he so readily defended turned not only a blind eye, but a deaf ear as well, provoking an outraged community to protest in the most visible way.

Kevin, withdrawn from his family and his practice, struggles to regain the balance and some sense of understanding, while redefining himself and his values now that he realizes "having it all" meant nothing at all.

In "Joy," Jackie Alexander, writer, director and founder of Across The Tracks Productions, portrays a touching and heartrending story that could have been ripped from today's headlines as the justice system in America falls under the watchful eyes of citizens who are constantly profiled and stereotyped and by those who were once indifferent to what some politicians now call an "epidemic."

30-second bottom line: A college graduate, who has made it in corporate America, has wonderful parents and the ideal fiancée, learns that assumptions by figures of authority in our society can lead to disastrous consequences. When all is said and done, it's not the job or the money but a supportive community with family and friends that ensures that sunshine comes after the rain.

Story Line: Kevin and Joy (Jackie Alexander and Lizzy Davis) are living the good life with the prospects that things will only get better after they are married. He takes a morning swim in his lap pool before Joy heads to work and they plan a nooner if their schedules permit. Joy's parents are on cloud nine planning the wedding and Kevin's parents have a meal ready whenever he stops by. If he stays more than five minutes at their house and there is dust on his car, his father is washing it for him. It seems that the only thing that makes Kevin's' world less than perfect is his sister on his case for being a spoiled son and Reverend Stephens, who thinks that Kevin is a token black at his company since there are no minorities on their Board of Directors. The Reverend is most suspicious of doing business with Kevin's' firm.

In the Bedroom was an Academy Award nominated film from last year that sneaked up on you with a twist in the story just when you thought you knew where it was going; Joy shocks even more. It's a better story in that rather than seeking revenge for a perceived wrong, the victim takes a realistic look at how to fight back and assuage one's sorrow by using legal means.

Tell me more about it: When something really bad happens and you can't turn the clock back, learning to live with the pain may be the right thing to do but it's easier said than done. If there is any redemption it may be that you have been able to take action, which might keep the event that happened to you from touching others. Only then can you say there was a purpose to what occurred.

Just recently a 24-year-old white police office pleaded innocent to assaulting a 16-year-old black teenager who was handcuffed. It was videotaped and his partner has been charged by a grand jury with filing a false police report.

Haven't we learned from the Rodney King fiasco and other police altercations that the punishment should fit the crime? What happens to one person can happen to another, regardless of race, age, social standing, where you live, or any other demographic fact. Joy is an insightful drama on life in America.

I'd like to believe that everyone is equal under the law. There's been a conversation about that since July of 1776. Maybe before long, it will truly become a reality. The time for that came a long time ago.

Alexander plays Kevin, an articulate, intelligent, self-centered and highly successful lawyer-money, suburban house, nice car, etc.; he has two loving parents and camaraderie with first-rate friends, including a white female district attorney (a former lover). And, he's to marry the love of his life-Joy, a considerate physician, played with charm and confidence, by Lizzy Cooper Davis (Kali's Vibe). Together they exhibit great chemistry and empathy in the film's idyllic first part, ending abruptly with a "driving while black" incident: His understandable, but stupid race-blind assertiveness is too much for a pushy, trigger-cocky white cop, who shoots his fiancée and is acquitted of charges, despite convincing evidence. He wakes up from his dream-life, though not completely! He's dazed and dismayed, grieving for over a year.

Unfortunately, these powerful moral plot points lag and lurch along do to uneven editing and production constraints. For example, we don't see a trial segment or funeral, only Kevin's gravesite visit, leaving us with to wonder about Joy's parents' (and friends') grief, notwithstanding character backgrounds. Mr. Alexander makes up reasonably for script supervision short comings in illuminating Kevin's difficulties finding meaning in loss via a reality check through an above-board, tough dialogue between the loosing prosecutor-his former white girlfriend, on race, love and politics, and another encounter with a persuasive, but pushy preacher, who's rallying the community to protest this outrageous injustice, prodding his participation to bring some degree of closure-and new found Joy.

The first half of the film plays like a Sunday drive through Pleasantville, where mothers and daughters bake pies and sip tea and flip through bridal magazines while dads leisurely chip golf balls or putter around the family car. The narrative moves through a series of increasingly idealistic scenes, which could seem farcically-optimistic were Alexander's dialogue not so well written and the characters not so well cast. (Lizzy Davis gives a particularly inspired performance as Joy, a pediatrician and Jackie's fiancée, and one suspects this film may ultimately be remembered as the vehicle by which a new star was ushered onto the scene.)

The utopian facade is shattered when Joy is shot by a cop during a traffic stop; a device which, while perhaps somewhat clichéd, is still allegorically powerful and ultimately necessary to advance the transition into the second act. Confronted with the reality he systematically avoided and discounted, Kevin is now force to deal with the fact that, when stripped of his romantic idealism and his intellectual and capitalist trappings, the inescapable reality is that he is a black man in America. And it is how he will choose to deal with this new-found self-awareness, and in climbing down from the fence, that he can eventually be made whole again. Like Job, it is only when he's had everything, taken from him that his character can is truly revealed.