County to create the South Central neighborhood of Watts, where the film is largely set. Menace II Society combined locations across L.A. RELATED: Watch TAG, a Short Film About a Young Graffiti Artist On the Run in Los Angeles gave way to the midnight joyrides and luridly lit interiors of Menace. Boyz ’s sun-drenched neighborhood of Cimarron St. riots, Menace was shot about six months after the riots ended.

simmering in what was to boil over into the L.A.

Where Dennis Hopper’s Colors (1988) and Singleton’s film were depictions of an L.A. Though comparisons are naturally made between Boyz N the Hood and Menace II Society, the latter might actually be more akin to films that depict a seedy and malevolent nighttime underbelly of Los Angeles like L.A. Menace II Society, about a recent graduate of Jordan High School in Watts who struggles with becoming trapped in the violent gang culture of which a contemptuous society has deemed him fit, is one of the darkest – both figuratively and literally – not only of ‘hood film but also of L.A. Jordan Downs Housing Community in Watts. Credit: Jared Cowan classic, Boyz N the Hood (1991), the Hughes Brothers’ Menace II Society (1993) is one of a handful of films dating back to Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971) and Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1978) that hasn’t shied from and vividly depicted life in South Los Angeles. Hot on the heels of John Singleton’s L.A. Twenty-five years ago, filmmakers Allen and Albert Hughes burst onto the Hollywood scene with an unflinching, raw, and, at times, brutal portrayal of African-American teenage life in South Central L.A.

Jada pinkett smith menace ii society