blaisetelfer Review of Dead Presidents

Dead Presidents (1995)

Nothing but a Black Panther propaganda film

[1/10 · 8 November 2009]

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.