Dead Presidents (1995)

If you were compiling a list of the best Vietnam war movies, chances are you wouldn’t have Dead Presidents on that list. Admittedly that might be because there’s not a huge amount of specific war action, and it depends on how you define a specific Vietnam war film, but it’s also probable that you may not have seen it. If you haven’t, I cannot recommend that you rectify that enough. The Hughes Brothers second directorial feature is a paragon of post war serving troubles. Anthony (a really excellent Larenz Tate) signs up to serve in Vietnam to the chagrin of his Mother. The preamble to the war itself is immersive of black societal life in 1969 New York (specifically the Bronx) as Anthony hangs out with his friends, most notably his close friend Skip (a young Chris Tucker, easily the best thing I’ve seen him do) and there’s shades of Mean Streets (1973) in the early scenes as well as a real sense of community and family. That all changes when Anthony and Skip return home from Vietnam. They struggle badly to find work, as Anthony desperately tries to provide for his girlfriend Juanita and young daughter. Things are made worse when he finds out Juanita had an affair with a local Pimp who helped her financially while Anthony was away. The first film Dead Presidents reminded me of was Oliver Stone’s Born On The 4th Of July (1989) as you’d probably expect, but as much as I like that film, Dead Presidents is a more hard hitting film. Both the acting and the directing really pull you in to the horrific struggle that people like Anthony and Skip had to go through, and in many cases didn’t. Dead Presidents spends enough time in Vietnam to convince you of the atrocities of it, which makes the punch even worse when you find yourself wishing Anthony was still there instead of considering a life of violent crime to get by. ‘Dead Presidents’ is street slang for money, and the film really hits you with the fiscal vitality of Anthony’s community, especially the injustice with regards to the treatment of post war vets, most notably in Anthony’s case when many black people were treated as second-class citizens. This is probably one of the best films of the nineties, and I do not say that lightly. 8.4/10