Dead Presidents

I've wanted to see this movie for a long time and was hoping for something that had a strong story to tell, with equally strong performances from its stars. What I was expecting was a bank heist film, because of the way it was originally advertised as, but this movie has a deeper message and the heist is almost an after thought. The term Dead Presidents, in case you were unsure, refers to money, describing the faces of the dead presidents on the currency. Which only leads you more in the wrong direction of what to expect from this film.Life for young men, particularly black men, in the late 60s and early 70s was hard, but coming back from the Viet Nam War was even harder and some of the decisions that were made were out of desperation. The story focuses on Anthony Curtis who's played by Larenz Tate and does a superb job as a young man being torn from one life to another. The hardships that are described here are at times hard to see and disturbing to think about but they are so realistic that you wonder if this more of a biographical movie fiction related. The war sequences are disturbing in their own right and make you wonder if you would be able to survive the whole ordeal yourself.
I would recommend this movie to any one who is interested in seeing a film about the effects of war on returning soldiers from combat in Viet Nam. But you must remember that this is not a completely action film, its more of a drama about the life of a man with the war stuck in the middle. After watching this film, and seeing it for its merits, you have to wonder if the studio executives really had any faith in this movie. To market the film as something that it's not only hurt the box office because it was not attracting the right audience. The audience that did come were disappointed with what they saw, because it wasn't what they were promised by the advertising.