Dead Presidents (1995)

That was an excellent one.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

This might make me very unpopular, but this seemed like a very generic story, even in 1995, rebranded into the black community. To be fair, I've seen several gay stories that have been reworked, involving only gay characters and it produced the same results: a low-budget version of better films.Here, we have many really bad people who end up doing very bad things and attempt to have somewhat of a conscience. Not enough for us to feel bad for them, but for us to think maybe they have a heart. Spoiler: they really don't.I actually knew nothing of this story, other than there was a heist. A friend recommended this to me, and I opened my mind to the movie. Not the movie's fault, but I really thought this was all about a heist, like (years later) The Town. Nope. It centered on clichéd characters that end up in a buck fifty version of the Vietnam War and then suddenly go really bad when things didn't pan out the way they predicted it would.Subjects are brought up, and either glossed over or the directors/writers just expected everyone to know them in advance, and then finally, in the somewhat climax, the title of the film takes place. This was probably a really low budget feature and it felt that way all the way through, despite the awesome and talented cast. Unfortunately, the depth of the characters was not there. At no time did I feel for any of them, nor did I see them rise above the formulaic stereotypes they were. Worse, it was a long journey of blandness for them to become stupid with no redemption. When were we supposed to feel anything? Even the talented Chris Tucker, who, sadly, played his usual role, if a bit toned down one level, couldn't succumb the below independent low budget script here.Completely avoidable. I learned nothing here, felt nothing and wish they would've worked on the script a few more times before attempting to engage the audience with a decade's old plot.* * *Final thoughts: Filming the Vietnam conflict in someone's backyard doesn't have the same impact as most 'Nam films. It actually wanes the impact our Americans had to endure. Even when you throw a decapitated head into the mix. Shame.

That's the main point that stood out for me in this movie.Still a teenager the draft called me and some of my homies,some of them went to Nam.First and second hand I've known the vast majority of persons that went there went through changes.The brutality in this movie reflected some of the experiences I heard about.Many men don't recover from it,a lot are around us and are misunderstood.Some persons may have a different opinion about war after viewing this movie.That was the strong point for me about this movie.This review comes from a person that might of talked about World War II with their Uncle but his body was never sent back.

This movie is just a total waste of time. I'm telling you DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME.Terrible Acting, I mean Chris Tucker??? This guy is just horrible.The slowness of this film isn't the only issue I have with it, the directing is awful.Take for example the scenes in Vietnam - how predictable were they??? The camera angles were done by a first time director.The scene at the butcher shop - look how immature this scene really is. Are the people walking by robots? Its as if they tried to over direct them.Scene when girl first meets him her father (Anthony) - is she a Zombie? Its like a 1970s film where they used a puppet to get the child actor's attention.And when he is having nightmares - What the HELL!! OK and last 2 rips:Absolutely needed more music in the background, the silence made some scenes so slow, so boring.And why all the racial references? Just not needed!Skip the waste of 2hrs.

Please spare me this cliché: the tragedies of a shell-shocked veteran who comes back to his inner city neighborhood and has trouble finding work, his disillusion with the American dream, and how joining the military was the worst decision he ever made. That I could handle, (because I've seen it a million times), but all that nonsense at the end about "how dare you lock me up, after all I did for this country", spoken by a cop-killer? The Black Panthers are portrayed as strong and justified, when really they were a bunch of jabbering radicals who couldn't grow out of their teenage rebellion. The main character was not screwed by "the man" or "the system", he was just psychotic. A lot of men came back from Vietnam and many were troubled, but most did not hit their wives or robbed armored cars.