Amazon.com video review:
Twin brother codirectors Albert and Alan Hughes planned their
first film, the 1991 ghetto crime drama Menace II Society
as a response to John Singleton's Boyz N the Hood,
which they considered wimpy and moralistic. They set their sights on
The Deer Hunter
in this ambitious follow-up, and they just about pull it off. Larenz
Tate (from Why Do Fools Fall in Love) plays Anthony Curtis, an
open-hearted African American teenager who gets shipped out to Vietnam
with several of his pals, witnesses unspeakable horrors, and then
struggles to readjust to civilian life. The evolving textures of life
in a declining inner-city neighborhood over a period of a decade are
seamlessly evoked, and there's enough nuanced character development
and personal interaction for a seven-hour miniseries. Still in their
early 20s, the Hughes brothers are already poised and masterful
moviemakers; they cover an enormous amount of historical and emotional
ground, and every twist and turn is crystal clear. They betray their
inexperience only at the very end, in an elaborately staged heist
sequence that, while stunningly executed, feels a bit desperate, as if
they were reaching blindly for a big payoff. Chris Tucker (Rush
Hour) has a startling supporting role as a kid who becomes junkie
during the war, and never quite recovers. --David Chute
