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- This is a well-made, extremely disturbing film. It examines the urban American dystopia created by systemic racism, systematic economic oppression, the drug trade, and the resulting culture of nihilism and violence that permeated lower-income black neighborhoods.
www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-reviews/menace-ii-society
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May 26, 1993 · Because “Menace II Society” paints such an uncompromised picture and offers no easy hope or optimistic conclusion, it may be seen as a negative film in some quarters. “If you hate blacks, this movie will make you hate them more,” Allen Hughes said during his Cannes visit.
The problem is, systemic issues are not present in the movie. At least not to a degree when characters don't have a choice. A really good example of that is a dialogue between two characters: Caine, the violent criminal protagonist, and Shariff, his friend who stays away from crime.
Intense '90s film about oppression has violence, drugs. Read Common Sense Media's Menace II Society review, age rating, and parents guide.
- Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes
- Barbara Shulgasser-Parker
- Larenz Tate
Jun 15, 2023 · When it was released 30 years ago, “ Menace II Society ” was a shock to the system. Maybe because the trailer conveyed a sense of optimism amid scenes of Black urban life, many moviegoers...
- Lawrence Ware
- Style/Storytelling
- Social Commentary
- The Hood Movie
- Morality
- Final Thoughts
Scott: My reaction to seeing Menace II Society in theaters was absolute astonishment—it was so stylish, so uncompromising, so relentlessly despairing in its depiction of hood life, and I’d never seen anything like it. Seeing it again today, for the first time since 1993, I recognize that I had seen something like it—Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas—and...
Keith: For about half its running time, it doesn’t seem like Menace II Society is going to offer much direct social commentary. The opening scene finds O-Dog committing cold-blooded murder while Caine looks on… and these are the protagonists. Afterwards, we get a lot of matter-of-fact scenes of life in Watts. The Hughes brothers don’t exactly glori...
Tasha: Menace II Society takes a different tack from other movies about life in violence-plagued, gang-controlled, predominately black urban ghettos. Specifically, it’s straightforward and blunt about its characters’ criminal behavior and general lack of regret; they’re trapped in a bad place with bad role models, but Caine still consciously decide...
Noel: The Hughes brothers surely don’t mean for Menace II Society’s audience to approve of Caine’s overall descent into crime, but there are moments throughout the film where murder and theft are treated as… maybe okay? Or at least as something the audience can laugh at without being made to feel bad about it. When O-Dog shoots a crackhead and then...
Nathan: Let’s wrap things up by sending out a little love to scenes, characters, and actors we haven’t mentioned yet. I’d like to bring up my love for MC Eiht’s performance as A-Wax, one of a series of demons on Caine’s shoulder urging him to always do the wrong thing. At the time, MC Eiht was a minor West Coast gangsta rapper associated with the C...
Nov 23, 2021 · But to the Hughes brothers, Menace is an antiviolent film. “Any time that you’re dealing with reality, if you’re dealing with drug dealers, people are going to get hurt,” Albert told GQ.com in 2010. “Some people are going to die. Some people are going to get shot, stabbed, raped.
Menace II Society had a troubled beginning, refused a video certificate on the grounds of its profane language and brutally violent scenes, it has since gone on to be viewed as one of the finer exponents of anti-violence involving Black Americans.
