good film but with many flaws

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Dead Presidents is a gritty 1995 urban drama that tries to tell an epic story on a very intimate canvas, but only partially succeeds.The film stars Larenz Tate as Anthony Curtis, an aimless youth who is working for a local numbers runner (Keith David), who upsets his family when, instead of going to college, decides to enter the military and gets sent to Vietnam. The meat of the film focuses on his return from Vietnam where he learns he has a daughter he knew nothing about, has no way to support her, and learns that his daughter and his Baby Mama (Rose Jackson) have been taken care of by a slimy pimp (Clifton Powell). When the nothing job he gets with a butcher turns out to be insufficient to support his daughter and the child that's on the way, he ends up turning to crime.The Hughes Brothers, who were much more successful with Menace II Society, give us a long, rambling film that suffers primarily due to an overblown and preachy screenplay. The section of the film where Anthony is in Vietnam is way too long and ends just in time for us to continue caring what happens.Tate's baby-faced sincerity goes a long way in making us care about Anthony and both David and Powell make the most of the meaty roles they've been given. Chris Tucker is also effective as Anthony's junkie friend who contracted Agent Orange in Vietnam and N'Bushe Wright as Jackson's sister, who is instrumental in Anthony's descent into a life of crime.The movie is way too long, but Tate's solid on screen charisma does help to sustain interest for the most part.

when I first bought the movie I had no idea that it had to do with soldiers coming back from Vietnam. I thought it was just another run of the mill bank robbery movie , with our villains dressing up as dead president't ala Point Break. wrong,, my bad.. so it was interesting to see what the effects of the war brought on these 4 gentleman who come back from Vietnam with obvious pain and mental issues to deal with, besides the fact that they are back in society now , and not in the jungle anymore, they have to deal with wives. family, jobs, finances, how to live in society, well for the most part it get's the better of all of these gentleman one by one,, I did like the robbery scene very much,, the action was good, the pacing wasn't too bad. and I will have to give this movie another look and see in the near future.

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.

Dead Presidents has in its story a tale of desperation and sorrow for a period where young men were perpetually let down by those around them, and took the easy way out through crime. But somehow, just as much as Menace 2 Society in its own style, is relevant for today, or at least the period it was made in a dozen years ago. It's inarguable Vietnam made these guys the way they turned out, but it's not the sole catalyst. It's also the mood of where they grew up, the crime that was already inherent in the ghetto they were at. It's about the struggle of breaking out of a place and time that is all the more rotten for what the country they're in did to them by sending them off to unjust war. That's the "message", anyway, but it's only once or twice hit home harshly. The rest of it is driven by tight, extremely talented film-making, a contender for best thriller of the year where there were many good ones (not as 'fun' as Desperado, but with a depth and sadness to the scenes of thrills). It's also great to see the actors in the film work so well, including Chris Tucker- given more to do here emotionally than any other film he's done- and a small part from Keith David, who's somewhat underrated in his time as a fantastic character actor. Then there's also the bank heist, which is in and of itself dynamite, and the main plot of the deterioration of the romance between the characters that gets frightening. Even the resolution, which seems very matter-of-fact and bleak (watching Tucker on the couch 'watching' the Al Green song is a sobering moment), works very well.Dead Presidents isn't truly great art or whatever, but it does showcase the talents of the Hughes brothers better- or at least with more articulation and determination- than any other they've made (and all four they've done are well done, particularly From Hell and Menace 2 Society).