Menace II Society

You almost have to like Menace II Society. What other film presents a bunch of gun-tot­ing homeboys sitting around watching It's a Wonderful Life?. And, it's a reasonably interesting piece of street film making.

But its ironies are a little too ham-fisted, and it occasionally smacks of a social worker delivering a lecture.

The double homicide that opens Menace II Society possesses an authentic sense of casual shock. Likewise, the film offers an insider's view of drive-by shootings and drug dealing. The Hughes brothers have hit home with their unrelenting chronology of gang life and urban pathology. Most vivid is the film's presentation of violence that is passed on as a grim legacy from generation to generation.

But the movie contains a primary prob­lem — its odd distance from its own subject matter, almost as if it's a re-enactment from a "reality-based" TV show.

Which isn't surprising, given that the filmmakers, twin brothers Allen and Albert Hughes, previously directed episodes of the Fox network's America's Most Wanted. They've also made a series of rap videos. Menace II Society is influenced by both of these formats.

Caine (Tyrin Turner), a de facto gang leader, is the movie's central, tragic figure. Actor Larenz Tate's O-Dog, however, embodies the film's most chilling quality. When he takes offense at a Korean grocer's comment, O-Dog coolly kills both the man and his wife. Then he steals the videotape from the store's surveillance camera — not because he's trying to cover up the crime, but because he just likes showing the video of the murder to his friends.

Menace II Society strives for a hard edge, even as it attempts to be a hip hop version of Bunuel's classic film Los Olivdados.

It also wants to be a message picture, and presents critically important moral lessons: Violence breeds violence. Crime doesn't pay. Blacks killing blacks is just another form of racial genocide.

But, too often, their presentation bears a dry, lackluster quality that's over-ridden by the charged energy of gang activities. The movie lectures about the destructive nature of violence, but only comes to life when the homeboys start popping each other. Menace II Society will be an eye-opener for many viewers, but its morality is almost lost amidst the kinetic kicks of its storyline.