Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 19, 1993 TAG: 9306220046
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE MAYO CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
As a story of black teen-agers in an urban wasteland, it's bleak and virtually hopeless. As popular entertainment, it's violent and calculated to make viewers of all races uncomfortable. Not exactly lightweight summer fluff.
The first 20 minutes could be used a recruiting film for the KKK. It reinforces every negative racial stereotype that's been leveled at black people. The protagonists are presented as lazy, animalistic and unstable. The main character is a barely literate thief and drug dealer who can't read his pager without moving his lips.
In the opening scene, Caine (Tyrin Turner) and O-Dog (Larenz Tate) murder and rob two Korean convenience store owners on an apparent whim. A passing insult is involved, but that's a pretext. These guys - and by extension, their generation - have no respect for life; other people's lives or their own. When an older character asks Caine, "Do you care whether you live or die?" Caine answers "I don't know," and he means it.
The body of the film attempts to show how and why a young man could be reduced to such a violent, nihilistic view of himself and the world.
To a large degree, co-writers (with Tyger Williams) and co-directors Allen and Albert Hughes succeed. They begin with a quickly sketched in history of Watts. In subdued voice-over narration, Caine remembers that as he was growing up in the wake of the 1965 riots, the drug trade moved into the neighborhood and took it over. It certainly took over Caine's life. His mother died of an overdose, and his father was killed in a drug deal.
For Caine, hard drugs and large-caliber weapons are simple facts of existence. Handling them is a survival skill handed down from one generation to the next.
His deeply religious grandparents (Marilyn Coleman and Arnold Johnson) raise him as best they can and manage to get him through high school. But their influence isn't as strong as Pernell's (Glenn Plummer). He's Caine's father figure; gives him his first drink and shows him his first pistol. Now that he's in jail, Caine looks after his girl Ronnie (Jada Pinkett) and her 6-year-old.
The Hughes brothers are at their best in describing the world of the neighborhood and the complex bonds of loyalty that the young men of Caine's generation have formed. Compared to John Singleton's "Boyz `N the Hood" or Ernest Dickerson's "Juice," their film is less interested in individual characters than in the larger social questions.
Audiences aren't meant to empathize or sympathize with Caine and O-Dog any more than they're meant to like Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver." The only hope that the Hughes brothers present, and it's a flickering hope, lies in the principles of self-respect and discipline promoted by Islam. Again, though, this isn't a film of easy answers. The Hughes brothers don't place blame or preach. Instead, they're trying to present an accurate vision of their world.
Considering that this is their debut feature - their professional reputation has been built on rock videos and television - the film is remarkably well-made and ambitious. The plot covers a lot of territory but never loses its focus. The young actors are consistently believable as difficult characters. Veterans Charles S. Dutton, Samuel L. Jackson and Bill Duke provide strong support in smaller roles.
"Menace II Society" isn't an easy film in any sense. If it's not entertaining, it is engrossing and frightening. And that's the point.
MENACE II SOCIETY *** A New Line release playing at the Grandin Theatre in Roanoke. 90 min. Rated R for extremely raw language, graphic violence, some sexual content.
by CNB