Like seemingly every other character in the film, he’s numb and jaded because of his experiences. As an ex-con recently released after a five-year bid, he isn’t frightened when staring down the barrel of a gun. The man Tat impulsively kills seems cavalier about the prospect of death. Tat ostensibly shoots the man point-blank in the chest over an outstanding debt, but the killing is primarily to make a point. Jackson, oozing charismatic menace) was a drug dealer who shot a client/buddy in front of a prepubescent Caine. An early flashback reveals that in the late 1970s, Caine’s drug-dealing father Tat (Samuel L. Murder and other forms of meaningless violence are in Caine’s bloodline, part of his parents’ poisoned legacy.
Eventually, they catch up with each other. Like the protagonist of William Friedkin’s 1985 thriller To Live In Die In L.A., Caine spends Menace II Society chasing death. The question isn’t whether he will die, but how and when. From the beginning, death seems to be stalking Caine Lawson (Tyrin Turner), the film’s protagonist and narrator. It doesn’t happen to your grandmother at the end of a long struggle it happens to your brother, your cousin, your niece, or the guy down at the corner store-anyone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lisa Respers is an editorial assistant in the Carroll County bureau of The Baltimore Sun.For the Watts survivors of the Hughes brothers’ incendiary 1993 film Menace II Society, death isn’t an abstract concept it’s everywhere, as much a part of the atmosphere as oxygen. But even with my eyes closed, I can still hear the reports of gunshots in the night. Sometimes I wish that I, too, could simply close my eyes and block it all out. Others may want to latch on to whatever "positive" elements they can glean from the turmoil. Many, no doubt, would rather ignore the ugliness the film portrays.
It merely lays out a set of circumstances and invites the audience to focus on the inevitable logic of what follows from them. Similarly, one of Caine's "partners" who belongs to the Nation of Islam tries desperately to force his friends to see that their lives are headed for tragedy.īut the movie offers no pat answers. Caine's grandfather is a religious man who offers Caine and his friends a way out from a life of crime if they will only turn to God. In fact, the movie does portray positive characters. Hall deplores: "Say something positive? Well positive ain't where I live." To quote Naughty by Nature, a rap group that performs the "hood art" Mr. Hall wonders why movies like "Menace II Society," rap songs and music videos don't embrace more "positive" images.
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