A group of young men head off to the Vietnam war with hopes of returning home to live and build families.
However, after their service is over, Anthony (Larenz Tate) and his friends Skip (Chris Tucker), Joe (Freddy Rodríguez) and Cleon (Bokeem Woodbine) return to a very different civilian world, where the already difficult adjustment to civilian life has been rendered almost impossible.
With no other options, the group decide to use their wartime skills to get their lives back on track.
Dead Presidents is a great movie - flawed and a bit too big in its canvas, but by the time Larenz Tate and his friends are back in the Bronx, this movie scores big.
I watched it right after the Hughes Brothers debut, Menace II Society.
I was vaguely aware of this movie due to the poster and the soundtrack album, which I remember seeing in multiple music and secondhand stores.
After watching Menace, I was keen to see how the Hughes Brothers developed. I liked Menace and it might be more streamlined, but I think I like Dead Presidents more.
It has a bigger canvas and that ambition makes it more interesting.
Menace is very focused but there is something haunting about Dead Presidents that lingered.
This movie has a lot of set up.
One of the things I loved about the movie is related to production. This movie did not have a massive budget but it is a masterclass in covering an epic story with economy and focus on what is necessary for the story to work.
The story is divided into roughly three distinct sections: a set up in the sixties, with our main characters as doe-eyed innocents, followed by an extended Vietnam sequence, and then their return home in the early seventies.
The film is filled with bravura moments of style - my personal favourite is the transition of Larenz Tate leaping over fences to landing in the Vietnamese jungle, in the middle of battle.
The Vietnam sequence is brutal but some of the immersion is lost because the footage was shot in Florida.
During my viewing it felt like the Vietnam section feels too long, although it does give Anthony the necessary baggage. It also introduces Bokeem Woodbine, who is incredible. His transition from collector of human trophies to preacher is one of the film’s more significant ironies.
Of all the segments, the third act feels like its own movie. Once the action gets back stateside, it turns into a slow burn, as we watch Tate and his friends pushed out of employment, relationships and any other option for a stable life. It is also structured like a heist movie, as we watch the heist go from plan to execution.
The cast is terrific.
Larenz Tate convinces as an eager youth deadened by war, and then disillusioned again when he gets home. The scene where he is mocked by the pimp (Clifton Powell) who has been having an affair with his girlfriend Juanita (Rose Jackson) is heartbreaking, particularly after the pimp beats him up.
Chris Tucker and Freddy Rodríguez are great as his friends, who go through their own transitions to husks of their former selves.
Keith David is always good, but Dead Presidents gives him some meat to bite into - he lends a welcome dollop of humour and intimidation as Kirby, Anthony’s mentor.
I only knew N’Bushe Wright from Blade. She is only in this movie for a few minutes, but she holds the camera. It is a pity she did not get more high profile roles.
Terence Howard appears briefly as a local scumbag called Cowboy who bullies Tate. Howard is always good at simmering menace, and Cowboy is eye-catching as a minor antagonist. He becomes a signifier of our hero’s transformation - when Tate returns home he beats Cowboy to a pulp.
As with the Hughes’ previous movie, Dead Presidents is punctuated with violence, although the real brutality comes from the characters’ emotional and psychological scars.
The movie is an epic examination of the American system destroying black and brown men, from the promise of economic mobility through military service, to the social, health and economic pressures which force these characters into crime.
Backed by a great 60s-70s soundtrack and Danny Elfman’s off-kilter score, Dead Presidents is a fantastic, epic meditation on race and economic power in America.
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