With a tragic hero at its heart, the Hughes brothers’ debut drama painted nuanced portraits of characters rarely fleshed out in other films.

| Original Score: A | Oct 13, 2023

A lot like Boyz N Da Hood released two years earlier, it is a bleak picture and captures lightning in a bottle in which the city was still fuming from the Rodney King riots.

| Mar 1, 2023

Now that it is a Criterion release with a stunning 4K restoration, [Menace II Society] remains an important chapter in understanding why the streets are more than what is stereotypically portrayed in the media.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 17, 2021

Remains a powerful indictment of a country which was failing young black men in in the 1990s.

| Dec 6, 2021

From its shocking opening sequence to its fatalistic finale, Menace II Society is a raw and (mostly) realistic drama.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 27, 2021

There's no denying the visceral power of the Hughes Brothers' vision, but - with the exception of Pinkett - it's hard to have sympathy for any of the characters.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 7, 2021

Rather than being a positive step toward a solution, this one-sided, inflammatory film and its after-effects on impressionable youth may be yet another menace for American society to suffer.

| Original Score: C+ | Mar 7, 2021

The Hughes brothers are torn between the hopelessness of what they depict and a kind of haloed view of a better life.

| Mar 7, 2021

It's a movie that takes you where you might not want to go, and makes you care about hell in a very small place.

| Mar 7, 2021

A film like Menace II Society isn't simply a bit of crime-thriller entertainment from the hoods of South Central Los Angeles, it's a true learning experience.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 3, 2019

Intense '90s film about oppression has violence, drugs.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 25, 2018

Pounding "gangsta" rap also drives forward this tour of the projects and bungalows of Watts. Sharp, slangly dialogue and intense action scenes also make this a watchable and often wrenching vision of the way too many young Americans live, and die, today.

| May 29, 2018

The gang life, with its guns and crack, casual obscenity and misogyny, is expertly caught, but the Hugheses don't impose their own vision. We're left with the same old cliches and carnage.

| Dec 7, 2017

Don't let the silly styling of the title put you off; this is a powerful, convincing, and terrifying look at teenage crime in contemporary Watts.

| Mar 17, 2008

Bleak, brilliant, and unsparing: a full-scale vision of the madness that is tearing up the black inner city.

| Original Score: A | Mar 17, 2008

The Hughes brothers' debut is an exhilarating urban nightmare.

| Mar 17, 2008

Lewd and violent, but undeniably affecting.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 17, 2008

An impressive first feature from the 21-year-old twin brother directing team of Albert and Allen Hughes.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 17, 2008

Fierce, violent and searing in its observation, the film makes previous excursions seem like a stroll through the park.

Full Review | Mar 17, 2008

The most stunning feature debut in the new African-American cinema, even more so than Boyz N the Hood to which the coming-of age feature bears thematic resemblance.

| Original Score: A | Dec 27, 2006