Product Details

• Actors: Larenz Tate, Keith David, Chris Tucker, Freddy Rodríguez, Rose Jackson
• Directors: Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rating: NC-17
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Walt Disney Video
• VHS Release Date: November 12, 1996
• Run Time: 119 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6304011423
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,200 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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  #10 in	Video > Drama > Crime & Criminals
  #11 in	Video > Drama > By Genre > Mystery & Thriller
  #13 in	Video > Drama > Military & War

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Twin brother codirectors Albert and Alan Hughes planned their first film, the 1991 ghetto crime drama Menace II Society as a response to John Singleton's Boyz N the Hood, which they considered wimpy and moralistic. They set their sights on The Deer Hunter in this ambitious follow-up, and they just about pull it off. Larenz Tate (from Why Do Fools Fall in Love) plays Anthony Curtis, an open-hearted African American teenager who gets shipped out to Vietnam with several of his pals, witnesses unspeakable horrors, and then struggles to readjust to civilian life. The evolving textures of life in a declining inner-city neighborhood over a period of a decade are seamlessly evoked, and there's enough nuanced character development and personal interaction for a seven-hour miniseries. Still in their early 20s, the Hughes brothers are already poised and masterful moviemakers; they cover an enormous amount of historical and emotional ground, and every twist and turn is crystal clear. They betray their inexperience only at the very end, in an elaborately staged heist sequence that, while stunningly executed, feels a bit desperate, as if they were reaching blindly for a big payoff. Chris Tucker (Rush Hour) has a startling supporting role as a kid who becomes junkie during the war, and never quite recovers. --David Chute

From The New Yorker

Albert and Allen Hughes's first film, "Menace II Society," was an exciting blast of ghetto life, loaded with edgy humor that masked a deeper, more thoughtful despair. Their new picture-about a young black man's journey from the Bronx to Vietnam and back again-is an ambitious misfire. In the early scenes, which introduce the main character (Larenz Tate) and his friends and family, the Hugheses find a natural humor and a soulful rhythm. Then the friends ship off to Vietnam, are hardened by the insanity they live through there, return to an America that offers them little opportunity, and turn to crime. Although the movie is disjointed, the filmmakers pull off some bravura sequences (the armored-car robbery at the end is spectacular), and they know how to get a scene moving and build on it with a Scorsese-like sweep. Tate, Keith David, and Bokeem Woodbine put a great deal of heart into their performances, but because the characters are little more than types the film turns into one more indict-the-system polemic with little emotional pull. -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Film, February 26, 2004

By	S. M. Anderson "sma331" (Lithia Springs, GA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Dead Presidents (DVD)

This film was really good. By the end of the movie, I did not condone what was done, but I understood. How many of us know people who came back after fighting for their country, and they are working jobs that suck, and living a tough life. That's pretty much the message I got from the film. I watch this movie about once a month, I like it that much. Chris Tucker had a role in this film that makes you stand up and take notice. I would love to see him in more dramas in the future. He could do the roles.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful performances + tight script = GREAT MOVIE, November 25, 2004

By	The Fancy One "blackprincess" (Westchester County, NY) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Dead Presidents (DVD)

Is Larenz Tate one of the most slept on, talented young black actors in Hollywood today? I have to say YES!! He brings a deep intensity to just about any role he plays. "Dead Presidents" is just more proof of that and this film probably shows the best performance of Tate's career.

In this film, he's Anthony, an idealistic young high school graduate from the Bronx who enlists in the Marine Corps in the late 1960s and is shipped off to serve in Vietnam. Along with a couple of his high school buddies, he witnesses horrific violence and death there like he's never seen, comes back home after his tour of duty ends and finds it hard to adjust to civilian life. He finds that after serving his country, his country has very little to offer him in return. This was a dilemma faced by many young men coming home from Vietnam, and one that was even harder on black men like Anthony. He has no job, no money, and begins looking for other ways to support himself. Eventually he finds a job, but it is barely enough to pay the bills. He also has to deal with jealous guys from the neighborhood who envy him for various reasons.

Having a young daughter to support and a shady pregnant girlfriend who was his high school sweetheart (Rose Jackson Moye), the financial pressures begin to mount in Anthony's life. As things begin to crumble around him, he then begins to have thoughts of resorting to breaking the law in order to try set things right in his life, and hatches a plan to pull off this high-stakes heist. He enlists his willing friends, who are also looking to get rich quick, in his plot. However, the reprecussions of this plot are deadly.

The Hughes Brothers ("Menace II Society", "From Hell") have done a knockout job with this well-written, well-directed film with the Vietnam War as a backdrop and how it affected young black men in its aftermath. But I feel the main point of it was that even the most positive, upstanding and law-abiding person can resort to doing something unthinkable if they are desperate and they are pushed far enough. In that aspect, anyone can relate to this film. Along with Larenz's performance, Keith David, Chris Tucker (who shows he has REAL acting chops in this film - his performance is unforgettable), Bokeem Woodbine and Freddy Rodriquez as Anthony's buddies pull out all the stops to create nothing short of a realistic and dramatic experience for the viewer. The soundtrack is amazing as well. Definitely a must-see.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Hughes Brothers do it-- and do it well-- again, June 18, 2000

By	Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Cleveland, OH) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

What do you do when your debut film is one of the top 100 movies of all time? This was the predicament the Hughes brothers faced after releasing 1993's stunning _Menace II Society_. My guess is they wanted to get away from what they were doing while still preserving the Highes style that made _Menace_ such a fantastic film, so they decided to do a flick about Black Americans' involvement in Vietnam, and its fallout. (Does anyone remember if this was based on a true story? I seem to recall hearing that...)

More than anything, Dead Presidents suffered from awful marketing. Everyone flocked to the film expecting the whole thing to be about a bank heist, and instead they were treated to the story of Anthony Curtis (Larenz Tate, the actor who made O-Dog so memorable in _Menace_) and two of his high school friends in the late sixties. Fully three-quarters of this movie is setup, if you go in thinking it's about the bank heist, and I can see why a lot of people ended up panning this. However, if you realize it's a story about one person growing up, coming of age in the middle of the jungle, and his attempted reintegration into society, it suddenly gets a whole lot better. Add an ensemble cast worthy of many praises (including a young, hip, and very funny Chris Tucker as Curtis' best friend, N'Bushe Wright as his sister-in-law, and the brilliant Keith David as Kirby, the guy who originally gets Curtis involved in crime while still in high school), and it becomes an absorbing, painful meditation on life during wartime.

There are still some bad things about Dead Presidents, the main one being that the Hughes Brothers didn't go anywhere near far enough away from Menace to make this into a film with its own separate identity; in some cases, they might have been using the same sets, the same props, and the same dialogue. If you've never seen Menace, it probably comes off just as fresh and original as it did there, but those who compare the two (and saw them in order of release) will probably end up finding Menace the better film. One also wonders if the Hughes brothers didn't use the Vietnam footage as an excuse for some extra gratuitous violence; the more Vietnam war films we get, the more brutal the footage becomes. We KNOW war is hell, folks, and there's something to be said for the power of suggestion. Instead, Al and Al give us every gory, and I mean that in the nicest possible way, detail.

Still, I'd be wrong to not recommend this. It's good, solid work. But if you haven't encountered the Hughes brothers yet, I cannot urge you enough to go, now, today, and rent a copy of Menace II Society.