Juice

The film is an inflammatory morality play shot through with rage and despair. Read full review

There is a real terror in the faces of these kids as they realize that people have died, that guns kill, that your life can be ruined, or over, in an instant. Read full review

Juice is a film about choices. The right ones. The tragically wrong ones. There will be comparisons to Matty Rich's brilliant "Straight Out of Brooklyn," but Dickerson's effort is more richly textured, more grounded in an ordinary kid's point of view. And Dickerson's dogged determination to film from that perspective has resulted in a film rich in the right lingo, the right clothes, the right attitudes. [17 Jan 1992, p.67]

Juice has a mind, a mood and a method of its own. And what it does wrong is overshadowed by a cast and a pace that make you sit up and take notice. [17 Jan 1992, p.G5]

Juice may be disjointed and at times amateurish, but its lack of sentimentality saves it. [17 Jan 1992, p.D1]

The film winds up taking a clear anticrime stance, and Mr. Epps ably conveys Q's trepidation about his friends' behavior. But Juice also revels in the flash, irreverence and tough-guy posturing to which the film's violence can ultimately be traced. Read full review

Dickerson and co-writer Gerard Brown exhibit a sharp ear for dialog and have some real finds in their largely unknown cast. Read full review

Dickerson's story of street kids at risk breaks no new ground. It is better than most, but not by much. Sure looks good, though. Read full review

Spike Lee's cinematographer Ernest R. Dickerson demonstrates he has the juice to be a top-notch director with Juice. His directorial debut commands respect. What it needs is a deeper story to match its fine acting and visual panache. [17 Jan 1992, p.5]

Dickerson's direction seems more assured as Juice progresses, but by then, the film has become less a dilemma movie than a melodramatically conventional revenge piece. [17 Jan 1992, p.4D]

Juice is well done and sincere and the cast of newcomers is pretty good. As the story progresses, it leaves a realistic story and settings for routine chase melodrama. Its pacifist message is inarguable, but too obvious to be exciting. [17 Jan 1992, p.AE13]

Though it is a vivid, promising piece of work from first-time director Ernest R. Dickerson, it also shows how difficult it's becoming to deal with this material in any kind of fresh manner. Read full review

Poised halfway between the action conventions of "New Jack City" and the personal grit of "Straight Out of Brooklyn," Juice doesn't have the pizzaz or the insight, to satisfy as either exploitation or art. Dickerson and his fresh young cast make it move; it just doesn't move very far. Read full review

Dickerson's point in this passable but rather routine picture is that no one is exempt from the spidery grip of frustrations brought on by poverty and a life of depressed opportunities; that, given these circumstances, anyone can pick up a gun as the only answer to his problems. Read full review

It's a perfectly competent film, but the title quantity is the one thing this dry and earnest movie hasn't got. Read full review

Juice takes a black director, a black cast and a black theme - ghetto youths come of age - and turns the whole exercise into a white-bread,middle-of-the-road film. You root for it to rise to the challenge, to be better than it is, but it sticks to the straight course - polished enough yet steadfastly predictable, just another sentimental slice of mean-street life. [22 Jan 1992]

It's a fairly intriguing (and, surprisingly non-exploitative) premise, but director/co-writer Ernest R. Dickerson is lost when it comes to devising situations that would suggest what goes on inside his characters' heads. These people are all exactly what they appear to be on the surface, which isn't very involving. [17 Jan 1992, p.20]