THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 8, 1995 TAG: 9510100436
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E7 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
THE HUGHES BROTHERS, twin brothers who made their debut with ``Menace II Society,'' take on everything from the Vietnam war to drugs in the ghetto in the ambitious epic ``Dead Presidents.''
While one can appreciate the unbridled ambition, the film swerves in too many directions to score anywhere.
The result is more naive than illuminating, but we can applaud the effort.
The title, which is the most clever thing about the film, refers to the dead presidents on American currency.
Advance publicity for the film indicated that it was to be a crime heist movie about a bungled robbery.
If you go in expecting this, however, you'll be puzzled. Only in the last 30 minutes of the two-hour film do we get to the heist. When it does come, it is quite entertaining, even though it seems to be coming from an entirely different movie.
Before that, we get victimization. Everything goes wrong for Anthony Curtis, the central character. If we're to balance the scales only by what we're shown here, there was nothing else for Curtis to do but resort to robbing banks in the end.
Curtis, well-played by Larenz Tate (who was also in ``Menace II Society''), goes steadily from little hope to no hope. He's a good person, even though he runs numbers for the local pool hall operator (Keith David). The family wants him to go to college, but he, surprisingly, wants to join the Marines and go to Vietnam.
A 20-minute segment, smack in the middle of the film, trots out 'Nam atrocities fast and furiously - including a fellow Marine who carries around a decapitated head as a good luck charm. Anthony's traumatic effort to drag a dying buddy to safety is carefully chronicled.
After this quick stop we're back to the 'hood in 1973, and Anthony's welcome is not rosy. He's scorned for serving in the war. The neighborhood is now drug-ridden and he has a family to support.
In the final segment, Curtis and his friends attempt the robbery of an armored truck and it becomes a heist movie. This, though, is like leaving all the seriousness behind and starting a new movie three-fourths of the way through.
Structurally, ``Dead Presidents'' is a mess. Still, one can appreciate the audacity of the young filmmakers. They wouldn't flinch at next taking on a two-hour version of Tolstoy's ``War and Peace.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
MOVIE REVIEW
``Dead Presidents''
Cast: Larenz Tate, Keith David, Chris Tucker, N'Bushe Wright,
Jenifer Lewis
Directors: The Hughes Brothers
Screenplay: Michael Henry Brown
Music: Danny Elfman
MPAA rating: R (language, gore, violence)
Mal's rating: Two stars
Locations: Greenbrier Mall in Chesapeake; Circle 4 and Main Gate
in Norfolk; Columbus, Kemps River, Lynnhaven Mall in Virginia
Beach.
by CNB