YMMV / Menace II Society

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Some people believe that O-Dog has a Freudian Excuse for his misdeeds because frankly he feels compelled to be a criminal by the environment in which he's in. Others see him as a callous madman, a homicidal maniac unimpeachable where his only joy seems to be sadism or killing.
  • Is Ronnie someone who sees the good in two gangsters and wants to draw them out with love, or is she a Hypocrite making scathing judgment calls to seem Holier Than Thou while constantly choosing to remain around all that negativity? It's very possible that she is just as trapped in the hood as everyone else and finally gets her meal ticket out when she gets the job offer in Atlanta, only hanging around the thugs because those are her only options. Similarly, she only dates thugs because those are her only options. Notably, she only dated those with hidden hearts of gold instead of, say, O-Dog.
• Anvilicious: This film is absolutely relentless in illustrating to the audience just how mentally and physically damaging it can be for an African American to embrace the life of a gangster in the ghettos of America. The consequences of such decisions are very bluntly exemplified in the final speech of the film delivered by Caine as he is dying from being shot in a drive by:
  Caine: After stomping Ilena's cousin like that... I knew I was gonna have to deal with that fool someday. Damn. I never thought he'd come back like this. Blasting. Like I said... it was funny like that in the hood sometimes. I mean, you never knew what was gonna happen or when. I had done too much to turn back and I had done too much to go on. I guess in the end it all catches up with you. My grandpa asked me one time if I care whether I live or die. Yeah, I do. And now it's too late.
• Awesome Music: The opening flyby (when the timeline shifts to present day) set to a special, unreleased instrumental remix of Ice Cube's "Ghetto Bird", and the end credits song "Streiht-Up Menace" by MC Eiht. Hell yeah. The Film contains many great hits of Hip-Hop, Funk and R&B to contribute heavily to the film's atmosphere.
• Catharsis Factor: At the end, it’s quite pleasing for audiences to see a snippet of O-Dog getting arrested for the drug store killings.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The violence of this film rises to intense levels. This is justified, however, as the film is meant to be a crucial and critical look at the horrors of life in the African-American ghettos. That said, some parts of the film are seen as comedic despite the brutality, such as O-Dog's murder of the basehead who offered him fellatio, or Caine stomping out Ilena's cousin, both of which were parodied in Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • O-Dog gets this treatment because of his sympathetic backstory and having loved ones. This glosses over the fact that he is a sadist towards others when he murders a Korean store owner and his wife, not to mention that he uses the security footage for his own amusement.
  • Of course, Caine himself gets this too. He sells drugs, robs people, and despite being troubled over it, has helped kill a man and was willing to shoot another over a burger. That said, he didn't have much of a chance growing up in one of the worst hoods in America with a junkie mother, criminal father, and all kinds of crooks as friends and associates. Adding to his sympathetic traits is his moral compass of not victimizing children and the elderly in his gang activities, how he looks out for Ronnie and Anthony, and his Heel Realization in the final stretch of the film, where he finally lets go of the criminal life.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Larenz Tate as O-Dog.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: During the scene where O-Dog flexes the robbery tape to his friends, he brags about becoming more famous than Steven Seagal. Knowing his ventures later into his career, well, it wouldn't exactly be hard for him to pull it off.
• Moral Event Horizon: O-Dog crosses this at the very beginning when he murders the Korean shopkeeper and his wife. What's worse, he then uses the security footage as entertainment for him and his friends.
  • Rival gangsters cross the line when they carjack Caine and his cousin, resulting in Caine getting shot and his cousin getting murdered. Furthermore, it gets worse when one of them gets in the car and callously cleans blood off the windshield with his elbow.
  • Ilena's cousin crosses it at the end when he and his gang not only murder Caine in a drive-by shooting but also Sharif, who had absolutely no involvement in the conflict between the two men.
• One-Scene Wonder: Samuel L. Jackson plays Caine's dad in a flashback. He's quite a bit more badass here than in Jurassic Park, which was released the same year.
  • Bill Duke puts on a menacing performance as a police interrogator who entraps Caine into undermining his alibi by changing the times of his supposed whereabouts. Despite only being in the film for less than five minutes, Bill Duke has said that people still come up to him decades later quoting his iconic line ("You know you done fucked up, don't you?).
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Invoked. Unlike Boyz n the Hood, this film has no one to get emotionally attached to and there are no sympathetic characters in the film considering the main characters Caine (who pretty much embraces the crime life) and O-Dog (who murders people in a usually sadistic manner without any motives or justifications) are at war with gangs who they aren't much different from. The whole film is a dark representation of exactly how dangerous the streets of Watts really are.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Ronnie is constantly trying to preach to Caine about how being a thug isn't something he should aspire to be and seems to be above the crime lifestyle. While she's completely right about Caine, both of her love interests are thugs that take great pride in the gang life, and she constantly hangs around a bunch of fellow gangsters. This can make Ronnie come across as a Hypocrite and a Horrible Judge of Character. While one could argue that she sees the good in both Pernell and Caine that clearly exists and is trying to draw it out, it still feels a bit bothersome that she presents herself as someone disgusted with that lifestyle and yet that's all she invites into her life.
  • Caine is sometimes viewed this way. He has more morals than most of his friends, especially O-Dog, but by the final act of the film, he is a drug dealer, robs innocent people, and was willing to skip out on a child who might be his just because his partner Really Gets Around, creating another fatherless child who could grow up to be just like him. Even he acknowledges that he's done too much to redeem himself, so one could argue that this is intentional, but there are still some that watch his behavior over the course of the film and stop buying his sympathetic backstory.

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