Juice and South Central Reviews

Juice boasts an impressive cast, including the likes of Omar Epps (best known as House’s Dr Foreman), Samuel L Jackson, Queen Latifah and, best of all, late rap legend Tupac. The film follows a group of four school-skipping friends in Harlem, all of whom are fairly dopey, huggable hip-hoppers, rather than violent gang-bangers. Q (Epps) dreams of becoming a superstar DJ and auditions for a prestigious competition. Bishop (Tupac) however, wishes the group to become a fully-fledged gang; he buys a gun and convinces his friends to stick up a convenience shop, which proves to be the central climax. The rest of the film deals with the unfortunate aftermath.

It may be somewhat rough around the edges, but Juice is an exciting and often humorous drama. Its director, Ernest R. Dickerson may have gone onto bigger and better things in recent years – his television work includes Treme, Dexter, The Walking Dead and the behemoth that is The Wire – but Juice is an early indicator of his quality touch. Tupac is an engaging screen presence, though there’s a tragic irony in his character’s gun-lust, given real life events involving the rapper and firearms. The soundtrack is also excellent and consists of some choice cuts of premium old skool hip hop.

South Central is slightly more expansive in its scope and comes across a little like the Crips’ answer to Goodfellas. Bobby is a young man involved in the formation of the Deuce gang on the opposite coast to Juice, on the streets of LA. After being convicted for killing a rival gang boss – and thus paving the way for Deuce supremacy – Bobby is incarcerated for ten years. In the meantime, his young son Jimmy becomes embroiled in the Deuce gang and becomes both a perpetrator and victim of violence. Again, the film looks to how this cycle of absent fathers and criminal violence could be put to a stop.

Glenn Plummer is outstanding as Bobby and is the glue that holds the whole film together. It may be slightly softer than Juice and a whole lot more sentimental, but South Central is perhaps the slightly better film. Though my lefty sensibilities force me to raise an eyebrow at the film’s insistence of the importance of the traditional family unit in remedying violence, it would be foolish to deny it isn’t a factor at all. And whilst the film may be a little heavy-handed in its moralising, it is not at the expense of numerous gripping and shocking moments.

Both films are eye-opening and thrilling accounts and have aged surprisingly well. If you’ve an interest in American gang culture in the nineties or urban films such as Boyz N the Hood or Do the Right Thing, then this duo is well worth seeking out. I guess the most important thing to take from both of them is that those responsible for violence are very often victims themselves. Juice andSouth Central are excellent films with a welcome social conscience.