Rashid and Cyrus Cole Rashid’s real name is Thomas Jefferson Cole. His mother is dead and his father had disappeared when Rashid, played by Harold Perrineau Jr., was a little child. He lives at his aunt’s house. He is a young, distrustful and insolent black man full of longing who often changes his identity. At the beginning Rashid is a loafer with a totally destroyed family, but at the end of the film he has found his father Cyrus Cole, played by Forest Whitaker, again. Cyrus Cole is a man signed of the fate who had lost his left arm in a car accident where his present wife, Rashid’s mother, died. He has a new wife and with her an about 2 or 3 years old son. Rashid and Cyrus ought to know each other, but when they met, they didn’t recognize each other. They have a difficult, but not totally destroyed relationship. Rashid wants to get an idea of his father and in the end you can see an approach between him and his father.