Young men like Caine, who retain a moral compass still fall victim to this violent lifestyle because of the intense societal pressure around them. The prevalence of easily attainable guns means a simple insult can escalate to a casual murder with all the emotional detachment of changing a tire.
It’s an utterly dehumanizing society that is dominated by young men focusing on a tough facade and a me first code of honor. Children are raised by the community (Pernell to Caine, and after Pernell is imprisoned, Caine to Pernell’s son Anthony) because men who aren’t dead by their twenties have escaped, are imprisoned, or are totally irredeemable shells like A-Wax.
Menace paints the ghettos of South Central like a fatalistic dystopian society, in which there hardly are any fathers, and offspring are doomed to repeat the mistakes of generations past. As Caine narrates, “Instead of keeping me out of trouble they turned me on to it,” This short scene is genius in terms of foreshadowing the cycle of gritty, callous, and senseless violence while also setting the nihilistic and fatalistic tones that suffocate the rest of the film. a hustler), thus when his parents end up dead (exactly the way they lived), Caine goes to live with his grandparents. Community hustlers like Pernell (who is about ten years Caine’s senior), help teach Caine how to be tough (i.e. His parents (Samuel L Jackson in a brilliant cameo, and Khandi Alexander) are negligent and Caine is often a witness to violence, drug use, and other crimes as a young child. It begins with 1965 Race Riots before segueing into the late 1970s with a beautiful transition shot and narration from Caine, “When the riots stopped the drugs started.” This short scene establishes several important things about Watts such as the problems of drugs, crime, revolving incarceration, honor fueled killings, parentless children, police brutality, and prevalent gun ownership which goes back several generations. The story focuses on Kaydee “Caine” Lawson (Tyrin Turner) and his core group of friends during one summer in Watts, California as he ascends to adulthood.Īfter beginning en media res with a violent cold open, the movie gets going with a brief history of Watts, California. The narrative is extremely tight and focused, and there are few if any extraneous shots in this bleak drama. Menace is not only one of the best “ hood films”, equaling the high bar set by Boyz, it's one of the best films of the 1990’s. This is the Hughes Brothers directorial debut and their greatest triumph full of the no nonsense-in your face grittiness that would define their later films ( Dead Presidents, From Hell, The Book of Eli). Menace claims to depict what life on the streets of Watts, California was truly like in the early 1990’s.
Menace takes the groundwork laid by Boyz and pushes it to a dark nihilistic fatalism. If Boyz n the Hood was the ying, Menace would be the yang, its dark reflection.
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