The early 90s were the home of a number of determined filmmakers making ferocious debuts that stripped away the gloss amd excess of the 80s and approach certain genres – namely crime – in a way that delivered their message and violence in a forthright manner that hadn’t been seen since the 70s. Chief among their number were a pantheon of young black filmmakers who wanted to take their experiences and put them on the screen in a manner that felt as genuine as it was inflammatory. John Singleton’s unapologetically raw Boyz N The Hood and Ernest Dickerson’s Juice kicked open doors to allow new voices to be heard in Hollywood and hot on their heels were the Hughes Brothers.
From the first scene of Menace II Society, the filmmaking siblings were adamant to push things even further than they had been before as it told the story of Kaydee “Caine” Lawson as he navigates the Watts and Crenshaw neighbourhoods of LA. But while those that walked the streets before them could hardly be accused of pulling their punches, Menace II Society aimed to hit even harder…
We are introduced to eighteen year-old Caine and his volatile best friend, Kevin “O-Dog” Anderson as they are pressured to leave a Korean liquor store by the suspicious owners, but after something is said that enrages the trigger happy O-Dog, he shoots both the store owner amd his wife in cold blood while Caine looks on in shock. Such is inner-city life and kids like Caine have been forced to grow up tragically fast thanks to a drug dealing father and an addict mother. However, despite the grim realities he and his friends have to live with, Caine has graduated from high school and tries to navigate life as the prospect of getting out of the hood, or succumbing totally to a dangerous, criminal life have him contemplating which way to turn.
From here, we follow Caine as various events, both good and bad, shape his attitude to his own existence and whenever something good comes his way, such as the attention of Ronnie and her young son Anthony, something bad always seems to come along to keep that dread ever-present. But after getting wounded in the car jacking that kills his cousin, Caine soon finds himself caught up in a pattern of violence as his attitude becomes gradually more fatalistic.
While his friend group seem perfectly happy to exist in a world where a passing drive by could drop you to the concrete at any second – O-Dog positively revels in it – Caine is still offered various life lines to pull himself out of this world. Some friends are planning to go to Kansas, Ronnie wants him to move with her to Atlanta and his jailed mentor, Pernell, is urging him to leave and build an entirely new life, but even if Caine decides to leave the chaos of the streets behind, will the streets (and his past indiscretions) actually let him leave.
To watch Menace II Society now, there’s a sense that it’s very heavy morality story is slightly twee. In fact, if you’ve watched any other black crime drama at all, you can confidently tell exactly where the Hughes Brothers’ debut is going to end before the opening credits have even finished. However, a wise man once said that it’s the journey, not the destination that’s important and judging by the absolutely jawdropping opening scene, the Hughes obviously believe it too. While the crime genre excels in offering amoral characters that we’re doomed to follow as they wind their way through their various endeavors, few have offered us to empathise with young men after such a vicious scene. While Tyrin Turner’s Caine is only a slackjawed witness to the opening murder, he’s still complicit and the Hughes use it to show us a chilling fact – the people who are involved in such crimes are human beings too and while Caine eventually becomes a killer too in retaliation for that carjacking, he still has hopes and dreams that we address.
But while Singleton’s Boyz N The Hood was a wake up call to America that offered hope only to cruelly snatch it away, the Hughes Brothers go full bleak as the sense of hopelessness Caine feels is mirrored by the film at large. Flashbacks reveal that an infant Caine witnessed his daddy shoot down a man in cold blood over a money dispute and later on, we see O-Dog and his buddies laughing at the stolen security tape of his double murder. The directors flat out refuse to offer up any easy answers and instead forces you to empathise with the conditions that have placed such young men to act this way. As a result, Caine’s dialogue frequently highlights this – when pushed on religion, he responds “I don’t think God really cares too much about us, or he wouldn’t have put us here.” and when subsequently asked if he care whether he lives or dies, his honest answer of “I don’t know.” is devastating.
Of course, some didn’t get the message that the Hughes Brothers were trying to convey, especially when it could be misinterpreted as glamorising gang violence and murder (it was initially denied certification for home video in the UK) – of course nothing could be further than the truth as Menace II Society is quite obviously pleading for an end to street violence thanks to its style demanding a near-documentary level of reality. Watch how the film treats gunshot victims writhing on the ground, choking up blood, or how much your stomach loop-de-loops every time an infant is allowed to hold a gun in fun.
However, while the passion the Hughes have for their subject matter is undeniable, time has been a little cruel to some parts of the film that reveal any experience on the part of the youthful directors and cast. While Turner gives Caine a strong emotional core, Larenz Tate offers O-Dog a chillingly casual devil may care attitude to everything and Jada Pinkett is a rare ray of hope in such a hopeless existence, some of the other players seem a bit too broad and almost comes across as parody these days (hey, don’t blame me, blame the Wayans). However, helping prop the side up are a smattering of pros such as a pre-Pulp Fiction Samuel L. Jackson, a good advice spouting Charles S. Dutton and even a brief cameo for Bill Duke as a sneering police detective and the Hughes have created (or recreated) such a strong tone, any weak links are easily tolerated.
Wisely ensuring that the ferocity of their vision manages to eclipse any stumbles their inexperience may cause, while other movies dealing with life in the hood may take time to denounce the social issues that have created such an existence, Menace II Society instead cuts straight to the day to day on the ground in South Central. Bleak, uncompromising and utterly gripping, the Hughes Brothers left an indelible, exhilarating mark on cinema that left it bleeding into the gutter.
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