10 Globe-Trotting Movies About The Illegal Drugs Trade

10. Menace II Society

Drug-related gang culture was a common theme for gritty urban American movies in the 1980s and 1990s, not least in reaction to the wave of violence which spilled onto the streets in the wake of the crack epidemic. This ultra-potent, washed up variant of cocaine became the scourge of many American inner cities, with increasing levels of bloodshed as gangs vied to control their territories. Menace II Society is a portrait of such a community locked in a cycle of reciprocal violence from which there is seemingly no escape. It follows Caine Lawson and his friends as they lead a life increasingly dominated by crime and drugs in South Central Los Angeles, where life is cheap and guns are plentiful. The directorial debut of the Hughes Brothers, the film is a bleak and honest look at crime and poverty which avoids casting judgement on the characters it depicts. Which is perhaps just as well, since many of them carry out acts that are morally questionable, to put it mildly. An opening news footage montage of the Watts rebellion of 1965 provides some context for the setting; an African-American community in which the prospects for gainful employment and self-respect were largely denied, oppressed by a white-dominated police force. Three decades later, poverty and crime are the dominating forces and racial profiling is as commonplace as ever.