2 Late 2 Survive?

For those who fell back asleep after New Jack City, took a nap after Boyz N the Hood, or hid under the covers after the Los Angeles rebellion, the snooze alarm has just gone off. In Menace II Society, 21-year-old twin brothers Allen and Albert Hughes (with 24-year-old writer Tyger Williams) have given us a captivating, skillfully made film, and the most realistic picture to date of life in our country's urban war zones.

Menace II Society is not a film in which America's urban crisis is solved, everyone is saved, and audiences' hearts are warmed in the end. The mission of these young directors is to "come at us" with some reality. The viewer is left with the daunting challenge--and responsibility--of seeking applicable meaning, answers, and actions.

Briefly establishing the history of the riots of the 1960s and the subsequent drug culture that developed in the '70s, Menace II Society is set in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1993. The film follows the life of a young brother named Caine (presumably named after the vice that led to the early death of his parents) and his homeys through one summer in the 'hood, where "you never knew what was gonna happen or when."

LIKE PROTAGONISTS IN other recent 'hood genre films, Caine straddles the fence between choices for daily and long-term survival. On one side are friends like O-Dog, who Caine--the narrator throughout the film--describes as "America's nightmare...young, black, and doesn't give a f--."

It is with O-Dog that Caine first becomes an accomplice to murder, and then a murderer himself, as the two become trapped in the retaliatory "eye for an eye" mentality that fuels much of the black-on-black and gang violence plaguing our cities.

However, pulling equally hard from the other side of the fence are friends like Sharif, "an ex-knucklehead turned Muslim," who comes at his brothers on a daily basis with the tenets of Islam, discouraging them from the drinking, drug use, and womanizing that have corrupted their lives. Sharif is the only one of Caine's posse who lives with his father. The filmmakers use this relationship to reiterate a common message in the African-American community: Black men must step up and be positive role models to their sons.

Sharif's father is the only person to talk to Caine about "survival for good." While Caine's grandfather futilely quotes to him from the Bible, Sharif's father has a more practical philosophy about his son's conversion to Islam, stating, "If Allah can make him a better man than Jesus can, then I'm all for it. Whatever changes you have to make, just do them....Survive."

He tries to convince Caine to leave Watts for Kansas City with Sharif. Similarly, Caine's love interest, Ronnie, a street-smart and responsible single mother (but the only fully developed female character in the film), tries to persuade Caine to follow her to her new job in Atlanta. The filmmakers present these options with caution and wariness. Religion might save some, but it is understandably hard to be a believer when, as O-Dog states, "I don't think God cares about us. Look at how we live."

Similarly, Caine challenges the belief that a new city will mean a better life when he tells Ronnie that he is "still a black man. You act like Atlanta ain't in America."

Menace II Society does not attempt explicitly to raise questions or provide answers. Instead it creates a picture of life in an urban war zone so relentlessly realistic and factual that the issues become abundantly clear and the viewer realizes the questions and answers must come from within each one of us.

Further, the directors are not merely creating this picture for those viewers for whom Watts is a foreign land, although they are an important audience. They are creating the picture, stripped of any romanticism or glamorization, for their brothers in the 'hood.

The directors present how pervasive and easy violence has become in an environment in which violent language and violent action are the norm, and they show violence with such raw, gritty, ugly, and scary realism that even the most avid "gangsta" should turn away. They want to get a point across: The older brothers have a responsibility to the younger brothers to teach them that "the way we grew up was bull----."

At one point in the film, Caine's grandfather asks him if he cares whether he lives or dies. Caine's response--" I don't know"--is the truth. By the time Caine determines that he does value life, it is too late. It is not that O-Dog's pull was stronger--just faster, more immediate, and completely irreversible. Caine "had done too much to turn back and too much to go on."

America will greatly benefit from the future collaborations of the Hughes brothers if they continue to use their chosen medium of film with such innovation, purpose, and honesty. Let's hope that we face their challenge--to change America--before we have watched too much destruction to turn back and too much to go on. Or have we already?

Jessica Brown was Outreach Staff Assistant of Sojourners when this article appeared.