Menace II Society Critic Reviews

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

Bleak, brilliant, and unsparing.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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]Read the full review

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]Read the full review