Dead Presidents

The Vietnam War movie has been a favorite pulpit of white directors for years, but only recently, after nearly a decade of "New Black Cinema," are African-American filmmakers in a position to screen their own readings of the Vietnam experience. Earlier this year, the earnest, awkward THE WALKING DEAD followed a largely black platoon through jungle hell. Now the Hughes Brothers, Allen and Albert (MENACE II SOCIETY), offer a far more ambitious, and equally disappointing, account of the war and its repercussions at home.

Despite an ad campaign that sells the movie as an urban crime saga, DEAD PRESIDENTS, which premiered at the New York Film Festival and opens nati...