Menace II Society (1993)

Load of rubbish!!

Great Film overall

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Having waited decades to see this film as I knew it could not stand up to Singleton's masterpiece, I am again disappointed in the Hughes brother an attempt at cinema. As always, the writing is terrible and the few decent scenes of acting are only to be found with Khandi, Samuel and Mr. Duke. I've never understood the attraction to this film other than moron who wanted to be hoods and as an adult it does not resonate one iota with reality or cinematic grandeur. Everything these brothers do looks like they were most influenced by blacksplotation, but they have no sense of humor, levity or self-awareness.

This movie was on BET TV and removed porn and profanity, so it was for me a pleasure to watch.The movie depicts what happens in my city and the actors are excellent in recreating the hopelessness and, yes, even the foolishness that some religious people use to improve lives. I grew up in black and Puerto Rican neighborhood and saw such attitudes. In the city I live in now, 2015, the ratio is 55 percent black and 43 percent white and 2 percent other. Year after year, the murder rate reflects either 100 percent black on black or no less than 90 percent of the same. If one watches this movie with open eyes, one will see the emptiness - ignore the obvious anti-police push - that peer pressure imposes and what a life without God looks like.

Menace II Society is an excellent and powerful Hood classic that combines terrific direction,a great cast and a fine score. All of those elements make Menace II Society a great Hood movie,one of the best films of the 1990s and The Hughes Brothers at their best.Set in the South Central Los Angeles section of Watts,California,Menace II Society tells the story of Caine(Tyrin Turner),a street hustler who has just recently graduated from High School and is on the streets. Now,Caine is trying to survive on the streets of Watts either by starting a new life on the positive side or become a victim of the streets.Menace II Society is a brilliant and unforgettable Hood movie classic that came out two years after John Singleton's landmark Hood classic Boyz N The Hood(1991)and if Boyz N The Hood is The Godfather of Hood Movies,then Menace II Society would be the Goodfellas(a film that The Hughes Brothers used as a template)of the Hood genre. Right from it's shocking and disturbing opening scene,Menace II Society is a film that pulls you into a dark,urban nightmare that pulls no punches and is a movie that offers no salvation or safe keeping. Despite the tragedy and sadness that was in Boyz N The Hood you felt that there was hope at the end,but in Menace II Society there is no hope or happiness and you will feel that nothing will be good for the characters. Where as Boyz N The Hood focused on a couple of good kids trying to survive in their neighborhood,Menace II Society gives viewers an unflinching look into the world of Watts,California showing world where most of the main characters are criminals and despite being surrounded by urban decay, violence and death don't seem to be bothered by it but embellish it because it is a way of life in the characters eyes and with some of the characters there is no other way. The carelessness and apathy of the some of the characters gives MIIS a nihilistic outlook that is bleak and at times reminds me of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange(1971)and Tim Hunter's River's Edge(1987)two other films that also have a bleak overtone. What is also great about MIIS is the style of the movie is almost like a Film Noir whether's Caine's narration or the dark lighting that is in the background that makes the movie realistic and at the same time surreal and dream like. The violence in MIIS is shocking and very brutal with nothing being toned down for the viewers showing how violence is shocking and horrific and when the violence happens it will disturb viewers mentally and physically with it's intensity and power. The violence in MIIS is not meant to be fun or exciting but to send a message that violence keeps happening and it's an on going cycle in the hood and ghetto and the violence also sends a message that the things that you do can come back to bite you in a big way. The main character Caine is a fascinating one because we never know what to make of him as a character he's not a good person but he's not a bad person either he's neither a hero or villain because most of his actions good or bad make him a complex character with depth. Caine is a character who is smart as well and you figured that if it wasn't for him being a street hustler he could've been a doctor or banker but drug dealing and hustling on the street is all that he knew what to do. Even though we don't know Caine is a good guy or bad guy there were some scenes in the movie where we as the viewer have sympathy for Caine whether you agree with his actions or not and he is a character in the film that you will never forget. The ending of Menace II Society is amazing and in my opinion one of the most powerful and devastating endings I have ever seen on film and the first time you see the ending it will punch you in the stomach because the ending is something that you will never expect to be so intense and truly gut-wrenching. The ending in Menace II Society will stick with you after you watch it and is one of the reasons the film is a Hood classic. An amazing ending to a great film.The cast is wonderful. Tyrin Turner is excellent as Caine,with Turner bringing sympathy and intensity to the role. Jada Pinkett is wonderful as Ronnie,a friend that Caine looks after. Larenz Tate is brilliant,unforgettable and menacing as O-Dog,Caine's trigger happy friend. Tate is charismatic and frightening in his performance. Vonte Sweet and Ryan Williams are great as Sharif and Stacy,Caine's good friends. Samuel L. Jackson is terrific as Tat,Caine's Father. Charles S. Dutton is outstanding as Mr. Butler,Sharif's Father who offers words of wisdom to Caine. Bill Duke is captivating as Detective,an officer questioning Caine. Glenn Plummer is incredible as Pernell,Caine's Father figure. Rapper Mc Eiht is good as A-Wax,one of Caine's friends. Clifton Powell does a fine job as Chauncey,a friend of the neighborhood. Arnold Johnson(Thomas Lawson)and Marilyn Coleman(Mrs. Lawson)are fantastic as Caine's Grandparents. The direction by Albert and Allen Hughes(The Hughes Brothers) is amazing,with The Hughes Brothers always moving the camera and bringing a great visual style to the film. Terrific direction,Hughes Brothers.The score by QD III(Quincey Jones III)is impressive and moody and matches the tone of the film. Fine score,Jones. There is also a great song by Mc Eiht called Streiht Up Menace which plays at the end. An outstanding song.In final word,if you love The Hughes Brothers or Hood movies I highly suggest you see Menace II Society,an excellent and powerful Hood classic that you will never forget after watching it. Highly Recommended. 10/10.

"We are being asked to take even larger doses of a medicine that has proved to be deadly and to undertake commitments that do not solve the problem, but only temporarily postpone the foretold death of our economy." - Hieronymos II (head of Greece's Orthodox Church) "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defence than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom." - Martin Luther King, Jr "Austerity is difficult, absolutely, but it's necessary, for rich and poor alike, black and white." - Frank Campbell"The more things change, the more they stay the same." - Jean Baptiste Karr Albert and Allen Hughes direct "Dead Presidents" and "Menace 2 Society". Both films purport to be "serious" examinations of the trials and tribulations of post-Vietnam African Americans, but in reality function more as giant exploitation films. The influence here is Scorsese's "Goodfellas", which the young Hughes brothers – the perfect age to be seduced by Scorsese's pyrotechnics - attempt to mimic blow for blow. And like Scorsese's film, though absent of his considerable style, the Hughes' work here is thin, melodramatic and sensationalistic, with deaths, screams, headshots, bombast, snorting, swearing and fury schematically rolled out to shock, bludgeon and titillate rather than edify. An entire resurgence in African American film-making would be corrupted in the early 1990s with such films."This is how it really was," the brothers would claim in interviews, positing their early films as a response to John Singleton's (underrated) "Boyz n the Hood". Their films, the brothers claimed, portrayed the reality behind Singleton's supposedly "rosy" portrayal of the African American experience. But time has been unkind to their pictures. And as the baseline for what constitutes "realism" constantly moves, today "Dead Presidents" and "Menace to Society", once touted as being a form of "black neorealism" or "black naturalism", seem hilariously overcooked and gratuitous. And as with all these films, there is little understanding of why our cast of African Americans do what they do, behave how they behave or examination of the power structures and psycho-socio-economic forces at work. (Both films essentially boil down to blacks killing for money; but "economics" is itself the cause of "the problem", stretching all the way from Vietnam to the Slave Trade to the Roman Empire) Still, there are good moments scattered about. "Menace to Society" opens with its best scene, an impromptu robbery/massacre in which a couple of black kids shockingly gun down the Asian shop-workers who insulted them. If disrespect is the root of all violence, we see that here, the larger marginalization of, or systemic disrespect toward, African Americans breeding both feelings of unworthiness and its opposite, a kind of manic need to protect, sometimes violently, brutalized egos. Black culture may have been mocked in the 90s for its "bling", its hysterical materialism, but this, as well as the numerous riots which rocketed across the US in the early 90s, was an understandable "response" to both widespread feelings of neglect and a culture with conflates wealth and worth. One should not have to prove one's humanity, one's worthiness, and when one is constantly forced to do so, pressure builds and one sometimes snaps. What's pertinent about "Menace's" "snaps" is that the victim's of such black aggression are always minorities or other blacks. Meanwhile, white faces are absent from the picture. Society functions in a similar way, Power deflecting hate away from itself – "down" the "social hierarchy" - and onto others. Unfortunately the rest of the picture degenerates into gratuitous gore and violence.Better than "Menace" is "Dead Presidents", which opens in 1968 and attempts to charter the lives of three friends (played by Larenz Tate, Chris Tucker, and Freddy Rodriguez) from the Bronx. They fight in Vietnam, are abandoned by the state, struggle to make a living, battle addiction and are then drawn to a life of crime.Like "Menance", "Presidents" at time shows traces of political savvy – one of the guards killed during the robbery is himself a Vietnam vet - but sensationalism, cynically employed shocks and thriller set pieces eventually undermine claims to earnestness. Blame Scorsese for this. Singleton's "Boyz n the Hood" was released before "Goodfellas" and so is stylistically somewhat different from most "African American" films of the period.5/10 – Worth one viewing.