Very disappointing...

Load of rubbish!!

Don't listen to the negative reviews

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

It's 1968 north east Bronx. Anthony Curtis (Larenz Tate) comes from a middle class family but follows one-legged criminal mentor Kirby (Keith David). After graduation, Curtis enlists in the Marines. His friend Skip (Chris Tucker) vows to avoid the war by going to college. Skip flunks out and joins Curtis' squad. Their other friend Jose (Freddy Rodriguez) is drafted into the Army. After four harrowing years of war, Curtis tries to adjust to civilian life. He discovers his old girlfriend Juanita had their baby. With a growing family and the lost of his job, he reunites with his troubled Vietnam vet friends, Kirby and Juanita's revolutionary sister Delilah in a scheme to rob an armor truck.After the impressive debut of 'Menace II Society', the Hughes brothers may have over-reached. This is too ambitious. The war movie part is surprisingly competent. It doesn't excel and may be beyond their abilities. After the war, it struggles to get the emotional tension. Like the Hughes, Larenz Tate may not be up to the challenge. The personal post-war struggle is compelling but could be much more. The final shootout doesn't have quite the thrills but has plenty of blood.

A young black man Anthony Curtis is about to graduate from college in 1969 and volunteers from the United States Marine Corps . Coming home after a tour in the early 1970s . Needing a focus in life Anthony finds himself being drawn in to a life of crime DEAD PRESIDENTS was released in 1995 with a fair amount of hype . Directed by the Hughes brothers it was marketed as a film that marketed the black experience of coming home after Vietnam . One can understand why the film was marketed this way since the Hughes did make the critically acclaimed MENACE II SOCIETY , part of a short lived but acclaimed " Ghetto subgenre " in the early 1990s . DEAD PRESIDENTS might try to fit in to this type of genre but what ever type of movie it's trying to be it fails because there's an obvious flaw - there's not one single likable character in the movie If the Hughes brothers had been white I'm sure they'd have been accused of playing up to ethnic stereotypes or at the very least making a blacksplotation movie twenty years too late . The film starts with some foul mouthed characters lamenting the lack of sex in their lives and goes downhill from there . The film then cuts to Vietnam and if Anthnoy ( And the audience ) thought the ghetto was bad then Vietnam is a lot worse . The war scenes are genuinely disturbing and violent but again this seems very old hat when we'd already had a glut of anti-war films featuring the 'Nam ten years earlier and most of them making an anti-war point much better too . When Anthony returns to America he gets involved in a robbery that makes the Vietnam war look like an episode of TELETUBBIES This is a muddled , unfocused violent film that becomes more and more depressing as it goes along . If the Hughes are making a comment that returning soldiers from conflicts regardless of their colour are callously ignored by the country they fought to defend then they have failed . There's little incitement for the characters to become the violent ruthless criminals they are . Just because an educated college boy fought in a war zone it never seems a convincing character motivation to become a criminal , and the robbery itself on an armoured car is done so graphically and violently is enough to evaporate any potential sympathy one might have had at Anthony's plight Despite being a competently made film , the editing is very good for example , DEAD PRESIDENTS is a classic example of a film having to elicit empathy from the audience and if it fails to do this then the entire film fails

That's the main point that stood out for me in this movie.Still a teenager the draft called me and some of my homies,some of them went to Nam.First and second hand I've known the vast majority of persons that went there went through changes.The brutality in this movie reflected some of the experiences I heard about.Many men don't recover from it,a lot are around us and are misunderstood.Some persons may have a different opinion about war after viewing this movie.That was the strong point for me about this movie.This review comes from a person that might of talked about World War II with their Uncle but his body was never sent back.

No film I have seen captures the time better. No movie I have seen tells me what it must have been like better. No film I have seen has stunned me more. No film I have seen better uses music to create an atmosphere that will submerged you. I saw it when it came out and it remains lodged in my head. They talk about education through entertainment. This film is a true example of this process. When I emerged from the cinema I was in a different world for at least four hours. Hollywood has done lots of films about Vietnam and lots of films about oppressed people in powerless situations. This ranks among the most powerful. I am not sure that I will watch it again but I am sure that you must watch it once. It is that good.