Classics Revisited: Menace II Society

Menace II Society (1993)
Directed by: Albert & Allen Hughes.
Written by: Tyger Williams and Allen & Albert Hughes.
Starring: Tyrin Turner (Caine), Larenz Tate (O-Dog), Jada Pinkett (Ronnie), MC Eiht (A-Wax), Vonte Sweet (Sharif), Ryan Williams (Stacy), Samuel L. Jackson (Tat Lawson), Glenn Plummer (Pernell), Charles S. Dutton (Mr. Butler), Jullian Roy Doster (Anthony), Marilyn Coleman (Grandmama),  Arnold Johnson (Grandpapa),  Saafir (Harold Lawson), Bill Duke (Detective), Erin Leshawn Wiley (Ilena), Samuel Monroe Jr. (Ilena's Cousin).

In the early 1990s that were quite a few “hood” movies – about violent young black men in gangs. Most of these films have mainly been forgotten – but two of them certainly still stand out – and still pack a punch. In 1991, John Singleton made Boyz in the Hood – which told the story of a good kid (Cuba Gooding Jr.) growing up in the wrong neighborhood in L.A. – and eventually gets out. Boyz in the Hood has been held up – even by members of Congress – as an R Rated movie that teenagers should see. It is a positive film. The Cuba Gooding Jr. character comes close, but never crosses the line and does anything that would make him irredeemable. He’s one of the “lucky” ones in that he has two parents, who while they are divorced, still care about him and help set him on the right path. Even the “violent” one – played by Ice Cube – seems more resigned to his fate than anything else by the end of the movie. He’s too far gone, and knows it – and the movie lets us know he didn’t last long after the events in the film.

Two years later, The Hughes Brothers made Menace II Society – and it’s an altogether trickier, more daring film. Its main character, Caine (Tyrin Turner) repeatedly crosses the line that the Gooding character never does – the film’s first scene has him and his best friend O-Dog (Larenz Tate) go into a convenience store where the clerk says the wrong thing to O-Dog – and ends up being murdered. O-Dog than kills the man’s wife as well, and takes the security tape showing what happened – and will use it to show off to their friends. You can forgive Caine for this transgression – he didn’t do anything, didn’t know it was going to happen – but he also does nothing to stop it. It won’t be that long though before we do see Caine participate in a murder – a retribution killing against the men who killed his cousin. Throughout the movie we’ll see him do other “bad” things – including carjacking another young black man for his stereo and rims, avoiding a woman he slept with who tells him she’s pregnant with his child, and thoroughly beating her cousin who shows up to try and talk to him about it. When his grandfather asks him if he cares whether he lives or dies Caine thinks about it for a second before answering. “I don’t know” he says.

Yet what The Hughes Brothers – and writer Tyger Williams – are able to do in Menace II Society is still make you care about Caine, still feel sympathy for him and most importantly see things from his point of view. After that first scene in the convenience store, Menace II Society flashes back to show us scenes from Caine’s childhood. His mother was a junkie. His father (Samuel L. Jackson) was a violent drug dealer, who thinks nothing about shooting a man for a petty reason in front of his young son. Both are dead before Caine is a teenager. Another man, Pernell (Glenn Plummer) takes him under his wing and shows him the ropes – basically how to be a drug dealer. Caine is surrounded by people who only know one way of life. He, like everyone else in the movie, has a limited perspective on life – he doesn’t see anything outside of his world. What chance did Caine really have?

That’s really the key to Menace II Society. Caine is not an “evil” character – although we see him do some horrible things. He’s not O-Dog, who Caine describes in his voice over as society’s worst nightmare - “Young, black and doesn’t give a fuck”. Caine does care about his grandparents. He develops a relationship with Ronnie (Jada Pinkett) – the girlfriend of Pernell, now in prison doing life with no parole – and for their young son Anthony who he wants to show the ropes to, just like Pernell did for him. But Caine, like many teenagers from all races makes stupid mistakes – and where he comes from, making mistakes carries more serious consequences. By the time he realizes that his way of life has no future – it’s already too late for him. During a prison visit, Pernell asks Caine to take care of his son and teach him that “the way we grew up was bullshit”. Pernell used to be Caine and now realizes the mistakes he made – but it’s too late for him.

The Hughes Brother admit to be inspired by Scorsese – particularly GoodFellas, and you can see that in every frame of Menace II Society. The structure of the two is similar – starting with a violent scene, than flashing back to scenes of the main characters childhood, before rushing into the present. The camera work is similar as well – The Hughes Brothers camera rarely rests, it’s always moving, always circling the films characters. There is a kinetic energy to the movie. The violence in both movies is presented the same way – often quick, brutal and bloody scenes. Both films take the audience into a sealed world that seems foreign to them, but seems natural to the characters. Had Scorsese been a young black man in the 1990s, Menace II Society would be the film he would make.

The performances in Menace II Society are effective – Turner has a rather flat monotone in much of the film – but it works for the character that is numb to his surroundings. He certainly has a limited range – and given his post Menace career, one can assume he never developed further. Much better is Larenz Tate, who looks so young and innocent, which is makes his psychopathic violent streak all the more chilling. The Hughes Brothers get some good work from three veterans – Jackson is chilling as Caine’s father, Bill Duke excellent in one scene as a cop interrogating Caine (“You know you fucked up now”) and Charles S. Dutton has a few nice scenes as a man not unlike the Laurence Fishburne character in Boyz in the Hood – the father of a friend, trying to look out for everyone, but knowing the reality they are facing.

Last year, I read a number of stories about a “renaissance” in black filmmaking – basically based on the fact that three black filmmakers made successful, acclaimed films in the same year (Lee Daniels for The Butler, Ryan Coogler for Fruitvale Station and Steve McQueen for 12 Years a Slave) – and more than once, someone would point out that this “renaissance” seems to happen again and again, before taking a step backwards. I couldn’t help but think of John Singleton and The Hughes Brothers when I read those stories. Singleton became the youngest filmmaker ever to be nominated for a Best Director Oscar for Boyz in the Hood – at only 21 – and was also the first black filmmaker to be nominated. The Hughes Brothers were the same age when they directed Menace II Society just two years later. Yet sadly, neither of them have been able to match the success of their first films since. Singleton made some interesting films after Boyz in the Hood – Poetic Justice (1993), Higher Learning (1995), the vastly underrated Rosewood (1998) and Baby Boy (2001) – but has mainly had to do action films – like Shaft, 2 Fast 2 Furious, Four Brothers and Abduction - in the past decade and a half. For their follow-up to Menace II Society, the Hughes Brothers made the excellent Dead Presidents (1995) – a look at black Vietnam veterans who become criminals. Since then, there hasn’t been much – the documentary American Pimp (1999), the stylistic Jack the Ripper movie From Hell (2001) and the action movie The Book of Eli (2010)  - and Allen’s solo directing effort Broken City (2013). It’s a shame that two directing careers that started out so promising have not been able to quite follow through – but I cannot help but wonder why that is. Do Singleton and The Hughes Brothers have a string of projects they have not been able to get off the ground? And if so, why not?

What remains though is Menace II Society and it is a masterpiece. This is a tough film, a violent film but an honest one. The final scene in the movie is heartbreaking. So many lives wasted for nothing.

Movie Review: Broken City

Broken City
Directed by: Allen Hughes.
Written by: Brian Tucker.
Starring: Mark Wahlberg (Billy Taggart), Russell Crowe (Mayor Hostetler), Catherine Zeta-Jones (Cathleen Hostetler), Jeffrey Wright (Carl Fairbanks), Barry Pepper (Jack Valliant), Alona Tal (Katy Bradshaw), Natalie Martinez (Natalie Barrow), Michael Beach (Tony Jansen), Kyle Chandler (Paul Andrews), James Ransone (Todd Lancaster), Griffin Dunne (Sam Lancaster).

One of the problems with movies about political corruption these days is that they seem to pale in comparison to the real stories of actual corruption coming out. True, the story told in Broken City involves murder, which is rarely the case in real stories, but other than that it seems like a fairly typical case of corruption – of men using their position of power for their own gain. We’re just much harder to shock anymore.

The movie stars Mark Wahlberg as Billy Taggart a cop, who when the movie opens, is being charged with murder, although the case never makes it past the preliminary hearing – but it is enough to get him booted off the force. Now, 7 years later, he is a P.I. in New York, struggling to pay the bills. That is when his old friend Mayor Hostetler (Russell Crowe) calls him up. He thinks his wife Cathleen (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is cheating on him – which could cause him embarrassment is his tightly contested re-election campaign. He wants Billy to follow her and see who she meets – and for this job he’ll get $50,000. Billy does so, finds the answer, and when that man turns up dead, decides to keep on digging and discovers much more to the story that he thought.

The film was directed by Allan Hughes – half of the Hughes brother combo who made a great debut in 1993 with Menace II Society – a tougher, more cynical version of Boyz in the Hood (which helps to explain why it isn’t as popular as the later, even if it’s just as good). For whatever reason, the Hughes brothers haven’t made a lot of films in the two decades since – just Dead Presidents (1995), American Pimp (1999), From Hell (2001) and The Book of Eli (2010). This represents the first feature Allan has made apart for his brother Albert (Allan did a short as part of New York, I Love You by himself) – and Albert has a solo project of his own in the works. I hope the two haven’t split up, and continue to make movies, because together they can be excellent. And Broken City, it must be said, has a gritty visual look – New York has rarely looked this dirty, which matches the subject matter.

The problem with the film has little to do with the direction, and far more to do with screenplay by Brian Tucker. In short, it is a fairly uninspired script, full of perfunctory dialogue, supporting characters who don’t go anywhere – like Wahlberg’s girlfriend played by Natalie Martinez or his assistant played by Alona Tal – and twists you can see coming a mile away. The basic plot outline isn’t bad, but it isn’t enough, and the film has numerous plot holes.

With the material he is given, Wahlberg does as well as can be expected. He has cultivated a screen image of himself as a tough guy – but a realistic tough guy, someone who audiences can relate to and root for, even if they are flawed. And that pretty much describes Billy Taggert. Had the rest of the cast matched him, Broken City probably would have been a better movie – not necessarily a good one, but a decent time waster. Alas, they do not. Russell Crowe sleepwalks through his role – the movie seems to have been little more than a paycheck for him, and it shows, as Crowe who can be as intense as anyone, barely seems to give a shit here. You can’t really blame Catherine Zeta-Jones for her lackluster performance, because the movie gives her nothing to work with. The same could be said for key supporting roles like Jeffrey Wright as the Police Commissionor or Barry Pepper as the mayor’s rival. Neither are bad per se, but they aren’t really given the opportunity to be very good either.

In short, Broken City just kind of sits there on the screen. Hughes does what he can with the script he has, but there is nothing really to sink your teeth into. In total, this is a pretty lazy effort all the way around.

Movie Review: The Book of Eli

The Book of Eli ***
Directed By: Albert & Allan Hughes.
Written By: Gary Whitta.
Starring: Denzel Washington (Eli), Gary Oldman (Carnegie), Mila Kunis (Solara), Ray Stevenson (Redridge), Jennifer Beals (Claudia), Evan Jones (Martz), Joe Pingue (Hoyt), Frances de la Tour (Martha), Michael Gambon (George), Tom Waits (Engineer).

It has been nine years since the Hughes Brothers made a movie. There first film, Menace II Society, was one of the best debuts of the decade. The followed that up with the underrated Vietnam era crime drama Dead Presidents, made the interesting documentary American Pimp and then the visually stunning, but dramatically uneven From Hell in 2001. Since then, it has mainly been silence from the brothers. The Book of Eli marks their return, and like their last film, it is visually great. Denzel Washington anchors the story in a kind of realism that is needed for this type of movie as well. Dramatically, the film is uneven, and the end of the movie struck a false note for me. Overall though, The Book of Eli is better than most action films that get released in January.

The story takes places 30 years after a war has decimated most of the world, and “tore a hole in the sky”, making it impossible for people to go out into the world with eye protection. Eli (Washington) walks a lonely road west. When he is confronted by a gang of would be muggers and robbers, he dispatches them quickly, with his huge knife, and walks on. Eventually, he comes across a town, and stops for the night to get some supplies. Again, he is beset on by muggers, and again, he dispatches them with lightning speed and a lot of blood. This brings him to the attention of Carnegie (Gary Oldman), the corrupt leader of the town. He could use someone like Eli. Eli, however is not interested, even when Carnegie sends the beautiful Solara (Mila Kunis) to try and seduce him. But Solara still comes back with valuable information for Carnegie. Eli has a book – the same book that Carnegie has been searching for. No points if you guess what book it is.

As an action movie, The Book of Eli works wonderfully well. The scenes are shot and cut with style to spare, but never devolve into the rapid fire editing that makes many modern action movies incomprehensible. The whole movie has a wonderful visual look and feel – not a million miles off of what John Hillcoat did with his recent adaptation of The Road – a similarly themed movie. The absence the Hughes brothers took from filmmaking certainly did not dull their visual senses.

For much of its running time, The Book of Eli functions well as a guilty pleasure. Washington is an actor we instinctively trust and like, and he carries the movie with his dead pan delivery. I think he may have watched some Clint Eastwood westerns to get the “man with no name” character just right. Oldman is wonderfully over the top as the villain, cackling villainously, and chewing scenery. Kunis is sweet, vulnerable and sexy as Solara. And in small roles, Tom Waits leaves an impression as a jittery engineer, and Michael Gambon and Frances de la Tour contribute memorable cameos as a married couple, who are also cannibals.

The ending of the movie struck me as false and phony. The final scenes in the movie don’t really work. You know what the book is well before anyone actually tells you what it is, but I had a hard believing accepting the fact that it was the only one left, and the other stuff that happens in the end (which, also, unfortunately draws a direct parallel between itself and Children of Men, a vastly superior movie in the same vein).

But overall, The Book of Eli is an entertaining movie. It is well made, well acted, and until the last act, well written. Welcome back Hughes brothers. No go make another masterpiece.

Movie Review: New York, I Love You

New York, I Love You ***
Directed by: Yvan Attal, Allen Hughes, Shunji Iwai, Wen Jiang, Scarlett Johansson, Joshua Marston, Natalie Portman, Brett Ratner, Andrei Zvyagintsev, Fatih Akin, Randall Balsmeyer, Shekhar Kapur, Mira Nair.
Written By: Emmanuel Benbihy, Hall Powell, Fatih Akin, Yvan Attal, Alexandra Cassavetes, Hu Hong, Shunji Iwai, Olivier Lécot, Joshua Marston, Suketu Mehta, Yao Meng, Anthony Minghella, Jeff Nathanson, Natalie Portman, Stephen Winter, Andrei Zvyagintsev.
Starring: Carlos Acosta (Dante), Eva Amurri (Sarah), Kevin Bacon (Tom), Justin Bartha (New Yorker), Rachel Bilson (Molly), Orlando Bloom (David), James Caan (Mr. Riccoli), Richard Chang (Mr. Su), Hayden Christensen (Johnny), Julie Christie (Isabelle), Bradley Cooper (Gus), Chris Cooper (Alex), Cesar De León (Dominican), Drea de Matteo (Lydia), Andy Garcia (Professor), Taylor Geare (Teya), Carla Gugino (Woman on the bench), Ethan Hawke (Smoking Man), Juri Henley-Cohn (Ali), John Hurt (Waiter), Andy Karl (Evan), Irfan Khan (Mansuhkhbai), Shia LaBeouf (Jacob), Cloris Leachman (Mitzie), Blake Lively (Girlfriend), Emilie Ohana (Zoe), Natalie Portman (Rifka), Christina Ricci (Camille), Robert d Scott (Du-Rag), Qi Shu (Chinese woman), Maggie Q, (Smoking Woman), Gurdeep Singh (Badal), Olivia Thirlby (Wheelchair Girl), Goran Visnjic (Man on the bench), Eli Wallach (Abe), Saul Williams (Rap artist), Robin Wright Penn (Anna), Anton Yelchin (Guy at Prom), Burt Young (Landlord), Ugur Yücel (Painter).

The so called “omnibus” movies have always seemed better on paper then they end up being in practice. The idea of getting together a group of great directors and stars and making a series of short films about some loosely connected subject matter always seems like a can’t miss proposition. But the reality is that most of these movies are rather forgettable.

In 2007, Paris Je T’Aime proved to one of the rare exceptions to the rule. Set in Paris, the film was a series of shorts by directors such as the Coen Brothers, Alfonso Cuaron, Gus Van Sant, Alexander Payne and Wes Craven among others. Bolstered by their success, the producers behind the film decided to do the same thing for New York. The results, while not quite as strong as Paris Je T’Aime (no doubt because the directors involved are not quite as good), overall, it is an enjoyable movie.

As it almost mandatory in reviews of these movies, it becomes necessary to tell the reader which films work and which ones do not. The single best segment in the movie belongs to Yvan Attal, in which Ethan Hawke tries hard to seduce Maggie Q. on the sidewalk. The film is a quirky, funny little gem that has more laughs than many feature length films. I also quite admired Scarlet Johansson’s segment, shot in gorgeous black and white, about a lonely man (Kevin Bacon) who takes the subway out to Staten Island. The segments by Brent Ratner, with Anton Yelchin taking a wheelchair bound Olivia Thirlby to the prom, Wen Jiang with Hayden Christenson as a pickpocket trying to pick up Rachel Bilson away from Andy Garcia, Joshua Marton with Eli Wallach and Cloris Leachman as a bickering old couple, Shunji Iwai about Orlando Bloom as a film composer becoming inspired by the voice of Christina Ricci on the phone and Randall Ballsmeyer with Chris Cooper and Robin Wright Penn as two people who meet on the street are all enjoyable, but not groundbreaking.

I was less impress by the segments by Allen Hughes with Drea De Matteo and Bradley Cooper mindlessly talking in voiceover about a potential meeting, Faith Akin, about a painter who gets inspired by a beautiful girl in a Chinese grocery store, and Mira Nair, but mainly because in her segment she has the great Irfan Khan and Natalie Portman, and doesn’t give them anything interesting to say to each other or do.

Like Johansson, Portman also contributes a segment as director, but unlike Johansson she shows no real aptitude towards filmmaking, making a pretentious, muddled mess of a film about a young father with his child. But it’s nothing compared by Andrei Zvyagintsev’s segment, which is even more pretentious, and takes place almost entirely through the lens of a camcorder of a teenager spying on a crying couple that he cannot hear. But sadly, Shekhar Kapur’s segment, which he took over from the late Anthony Minghella’s, is by far the worst, with Julie Christie as an aged singing star staying at a hotel where a limping Shia LaBeouf is the porter, and a possible Jesus figure. It just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

Overall, I enjoyed the film quite a bit. It doesn’t really mean anything, and doesn’t reach a level of true greatness, but overall, it is fun way to spend a couple of hours. The good thing about these movies is that when you don’t like one segment, it doesn’t last more than 10 minutes.

Note: This review was written based on a screening at the 2008 Toronto Film Festival. The theatrical version has eliminated two of the segments – those directed by Scarlett Johansson and Andrei Zvyagintsev. I notice that they eliminated the two segments with the least amount of dialogue in them. As you can see from my review, I really disliked the Zvygintsev segment, so I think the movie will actually be improved without that one, but it’s a real shame that Johansson is eliminated because it was one of my favorites – with gorgeous black and white cinematography, a real command of cinema language, and a touching, wordless performance by Kevin Bacon. Apparently, these will show up on the DVD version.