"Menace II Society" has received a lot of facile attention because its creators are young enough to be a publicity agent's dream the movie was directed by Allen and Albert Hughes, twin brothers now 21 years old, and written by Tyger Williams, who is 24. Like its characters, the film itself is easy to stereotype. Though Caine grew up in Watts, the son of a drug-addicted mother and a drug-dealing father, he had never killed before. Caine (Tyrin Turner) doesn't kill anyone until days later, and then only as revenge for his cousin's murder. O-Dog (Larenz Tate) shoots the grocer because the man has said, "I feel sorry for your mother." Then he kills the wife. It takes no time for the difference between Caine and O-Dog to become clear, though, and for viewers to realize that the violent, provocative "Menace II Society" is about seeing beyond stereotypes. They look and act like what they are - members of the hip-hop generation, where attitude is everything - but the Koreans obviously think they are about to be robbed. O-Dog's pants are slung fashionably low, showing several inches of his boxer shorts the boys shuffle in as if they own the place, and O-Dog opens his quart bottle of beer while walking toward the cash register. When two black teenagers, Caine and O-Dog, walk into a Korean grocery at the start of "Menace II Society," the store owner and his wife see a dangerous pair.
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December 2022
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