Menace II Society

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Nothing the Hughes brothers have done in their videos for Tone Loc, Tupac Shakur and others prepares you for the controlled intensity and maturity they bring to their stunning feature debut.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

As well-directed a film as you'll see from America this year, an unsentimental and yet completely involving story of a young man who cannot see a way around his fate.

Film Threat Brad Laidman

The film is one chillingly authentic scene after another... In the end it's more of a war movie than "Saving Private Ryan" ever was.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Bleak, brilliant, and unsparing.

Washington Post Hal Hinson

Though brilliant, Menace II Society is definitely a film to guard yourself against. There's not a trace of softness or sentimentality. At times, the picture takes on the scary you-are-there verisimilitude of a tabloid-TV show.

Variety Leonard Klady

Fierce, violent and searing in its observation, the film makes previous excursions seem like a stroll through the park.

Chicago Tribune Johanna Steinmetz

A film of great integrity, assurance and political passion, if not driving plot. [26 May 1993, Tempo, p.3]

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Menace II Society has a devastating impact. Few films possess the power to keep an audience sitting in stunned silence after the end credits begin rolling, but this is one of them.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

May just be the best in its genre… Entertainment and radical street preaching, all rolled into one. If it tells black kids not to try this at home, it also revels cinematically in blam-blam-you're-dead. This is what makes the movie maddening -- and what gives it strength.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

As uncomfortable as it is to have your nose shoved in this nightmare, its unforgettable in its violent lyricism and the bloody power of its message.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The movie's biggest weakness is in the presentation of Caine's grandparents.... The attempt, it seems, is to show a potentially positive influence in Caine's life. But the grandparents come across as canned characters, corny and concocted. [26 May 1993, Daily Notebook, p.E1]

USA Today Mike Clark

An unusually knowing movie from filmmakers of any age, both in its coldly clinical viewpoint and assured filmmaking style that even puts fresh spin on a routine police interrogation. [26 May 1993, Life, p.8D]

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

This shocking, violent, and unsentimental (albeit sensationalized) drama about a second-generation drug dealer (Turner) and the callous world he lives in, produced by "To Sleep With Anger's" Darin Scott, is terrifically acted.

Los Angeles Times Peter Rainer

Their instincts as filmmakers override their instincts as moralizers. Menace II Society is best--and most shocking--when it just sets out its horrors and lets us find our own way. [26 May 1993, Calendar, p.F-1]

The New York Times Stephen Holden

More acutely than any movie before, it gives cinematic expression to the hot-tempered, defiantly nihilistic ethos that ignites gangster rap.

Empire Kim Newman

It sets some sort of record for use of the expressions "nigga" and "muthafucka".

TV Guide Staff (Non Credited)

It lacks the vision, and the fully defined characters, of "Boyz (in the Hood)." Tyrin never becomes more than the sum of his conflicting impulses--he's a composite sample of a social group rather than a fully-fledged individual.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

The Hughes brothers' directing compensates a good bit for the story's predictability. [5 July 1993, p.26]

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Because the society in Menace II Society is boxed in sociologically, the picture (for all its strengths) is boxed in esthetically. Already, this genre is beginning to seem as much a victim as the victims it portrays.