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Menace II Society
Caine ............. Tyrin
Turner
O-Dog ............. Larenz Tate
Ronnie ............ Jada Pinkett
A-Wax .............
MC Eiht
Grandmama ......... Marilyn Coleman
Grandpapa ......... Arnold Johnson
Tat Lawson ........ Samuel L. Jackson
New Line Cinema presents a film
directed by the Hughes Brothers. Produced by Darin
Scott. Written by Tyger Williams. Based
on the story by Allen Hughes, Albert Hughes and Tyger Williams. Photographed by Lisa Rinzler.
Edited by Christopher Koefoed. Music by QD III.
Running time: 97 minutes. Classified: R (for strong violence, drug use and
language).
Excellently directed by the makers of Boyz in the Hood, this movie tells about a Los Angeles black young man who, though offered opportunities to escape his terrible environment, refuses to change until it is too late. The language is filthy; every other phrase is profane. Yet the dialogue and the narrative ring true. It is a movie about the horrendous values of these young men and what those values do to them. It proposes no answers, casts no blame. It is a monument to the failure of the church, and to the power of sin to blind people to the truth, so that even the small remnants of gospel (the boy's grandparents) are unheard. My analysis: when people accept the lie that they are victims and can't do anything to help themselves in a prejudiced society, they shut out their only real source of hope, the gospel of God's grace. And the wages of sin is death: that is patent throughout the film. More young black men die of murder than of any other cause.