Dead Presidents (1995)

A young black man Anthony Curtis is about to graduate from college in 1969 and volunteers from the United States Marine Corps . Coming home after a tour in the early 1970s . Needing a focus in life Anthony finds himself being drawn in to a life of crime DEAD PRESIDENTS was released in 1995 with a fair amount of hype . Directed by the Hughes brothers it was marketed as a film that marketed the black experience of coming home after Vietnam . One can understand why the film was marketed this way since the Hughes did make the critically acclaimed MENACE II SOCIETY , part of a short lived but acclaimed " Ghetto subgenre " in the early 1990s . DEAD PRESIDENTS might try to fit in to this type of genre but what ever type of movie it's trying to be it fails because there's an obvious flaw - there's not one single likable character in the movie If the Hughes brothers had been white I'm sure they'd have been accused of playing up to ethnic stereotypes or at the very least making a blacksplotation movie twenty years too late . The film starts with some foul mouthed characters lamenting the lack of sex in their lives and goes downhill from there . The film then cuts to Vietnam and if Anthnoy ( And the audience ) thought the ghetto was bad then Vietnam is a lot worse . The war scenes are genuinely disturbing and violent but again this seems very old hat when we'd already had a glut of anti-war films featuring the 'Nam ten years earlier and most of them making an anti-war point much better too . When Anthony returns to America he gets involved in a robbery that makes the Vietnam war look like an episode of TELETUBBIES This is a muddled , unfocused violent film that becomes more and more depressing as it goes along . If the Hughes are making a comment that returning soldiers from conflicts regardless of their colour are callously ignored by the country they fought to defend then they have failed . There's little incitement for the characters to become the violent ruthless criminals they are . Just because an educated college boy fought in a war zone it never seems a convincing character motivation to become a criminal , and the robbery itself on an armoured car is done so graphically and violently is enough to evaporate any potential sympathy one might have had at Anthony's plight Despite being a competently made film , the editing is very good for example , DEAD PRESIDENTS is a classic example of a film having to elicit empathy from the audience and if it fails to do this then the entire film fails

"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.

This movie is just a total waste of time. I'm telling you DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME.Terrible Acting, I mean Chris Tucker??? This guy is just horrible.The slowness of this film isn't the only issue I have with it, the directing is awful.Take for example the scenes in Vietnam - how predictable were they??? The camera angles were done by a first time director.The scene at the butcher shop - look how immature this scene really is. Are the people walking by robots? Its as if they tried to over direct them.Scene when girl first meets him her father (Anthony) - is she a Zombie? Its like a 1970s film where they used a puppet to get the child actor's attention.And when he is having nightmares - What the HELL!! OK and last 2 rips:Absolutely needed more music in the background, the silence made some scenes so slow, so boring.And why all the racial references? Just not needed!Skip the waste of 2hrs.

Larenz Tate gives a masterful performance in this 1995 film which chronicles black America during the Viet Nam era and the turbulent 1970s that came after the survivors of this war came home.Tate is in a bad environment in the Bronx, though he is supported by a very decent family and a brother on the way to graduate school from college. College is not for Tate as he really hangs around with the wrong crowd.Viewing the horrors of war turns Anthony Curtis (Tate) into a heavy smoker, alcoholic and user of drugs. He returns home to a restless society and hears young black revolutionaries calling for violence to obtain their objectives.His girlfriend had a child from him while he was in Vietnam. Unable to adequately provide for them, he turns to crime which ultimately in his planned caper becomes a disaster.Though he is angry and sorry for what he has done, he can't comprehend why society has dealt with him so severely in a 15 year to life sentence. He is contemplative and brooding as he rides to prison.This is definitely a compelling film dealing with the societal problems following a period of tremendous upheaval in our nation.