Dead Presidents Reviews

Since I’m a big fan of ‘Menace II Society’, I was always eager to see this directorial follow-up from the Hughes brothers and I’m rather surprised that it took me about 30 years to finally watch the damned thing. Unfortunately, I ended up watching it on YouTube without subtitles and I did struggle to follow the dialogues. Anyway, this sophomore directorial effort was definitely ambitious and I was quite surprised when it started at the end of the 60’s in the Bronx. Indeed, their directorial debut was a rather small (but still fascinating) contemporary Hood movie taking place in the Watts and Crenshaw neighborhoods of Los Angeles but they were making this time something much more epic about 5 years in the life of a young black man at the end of the 60’s. Well, even though it was certainly a decent attempt, I think it was slightly too much to handle for them at this stage in their career and they didn’t really nail it. I mean, the mood and the sense of the time period was definitely pretty good but it seems that they struggled to develop each chapter properly. That’s the issue when you went to go epic and tells a whole life time in just 2 hrs. How do you manage to highlight the right bits? The other issue was with Larenz Tate. To be fair, I can’t believe he was only 20 years old when he made this movie. However, even though he did have a pretty face and some charisma, I’m afraid he didn’t have the acting skills to properly show what his character went through internally. To be honest, the only thing that seemed to evolve through the years was the size of his sideburns and you are talking about a guy who did spend 3-4 years in the Vietnam war. Concerning the supporting characters, some of them were intriguing but they were even less developed and therefore even less interesting than Anthony Curtis. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it was still not bad at all though and it’s too bad the career of the Hughes brothers never took off afterwards after all. 

a well acted action packed story - that has real depth - so much more than your average ghetto movie. 9/10