A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Search This Blog
Showing posts with label Dead Presidents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dead Presidents. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 28, 2026

Dead Presidents (Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes, 1995)

Bokeem Woodbine, Freddy Rodriguez, Larenz Tate, and Keith David in Dead Presidents

Cast: Larenz Tate, Keith David, Chris Tucker, Freddy Rodriguez, Rose Jackson, N'Bushe Wright, Alvaleta Guess, James Pickens Jr., Jennifer Lewis, Clifton Powell, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Terrence Howard, Bokeem Woodbine. Screenplay: Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes, Michael Henry Brown. Cinematography: Lisa Rinzler. Production design: David Brisbin. Film editing: Dan Lebental. Music: Danny Elfman. 

The Hughes Brothers' Dead Presidents sags under the weight of its own ambition to portray the urban Black experience in the Vietnam War era, trying to be both a war film and a heist movie. Larenz Tate is too lightweight an actor for the central role of Anthony Curtis, who chooses to join the Marines and returns from the war to find his expectations of fitting into postwar life thwarted. The film succeeds in providing vivid roles for supporting actors, particularly Chris Tucker and Keith David, but the final third of the movie feels rushed to its rather flat conclusion.

Posted by
Links: , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)