'Menace II Society' Directors: Albert & Allen Hughes (1993) Criterion Collection Blu-ray | 4K restoration of directors' cut

Directors Albert and Allen Hughes and screenwriter Tyger Williams were barely into their twenties when they sent shock waves through American cinema and hip-hop culture with this fatalistic, unflinching vision of life and death on the streets of Watts, Los Angeles, in the 1990s.

Fusing grim realism with a propulsively stylish aesthetic honed through the Hughes brothers’ work on rap videos, Menace II Society is a searing cautionary tale about the devastating human toll of hopelessness, centering on a street tough 18-year old facing a moral quandry while trying to turn his life around.

Special features include:
- Two audio commentaries from 1993 featuring directors Albert and Allen Hughes
- New selected-scene commentary featuring Rinzler
- Gangsta Vision, a 2009 featurette on the making of the film
- New conversation among Albert Hughes, screenwriter Tyger Williams, and film critic Elvis Mitchell
- New conversation among Allen Hughes, actor and filmmaker Bill Duke, and Mitchel
- Interview from 1993 with the directors
- Music video from 1991 for 2Pac’s “Brenda’s Got a Baby,” directed by the Hughes brothers
- Deleted scenes
- Film-to-storyboard comparison
- An essay by film critic Craig D. Lindsey