Five Shots: DEAD PRESIDENTS
just what it says on the paper
Five of our favourite shots from Dead Presidents.
Wipe / Match Cut
As Curtis (Larenz Tate) runs through back yards to escape his girlfriend’s parents, the scene uses a foreground wipe to transition directly to him running through the jungles of Vietnam.
Through the whole running sequence Curtis and the camera move Right-to-Left, broad Western film grammar for ‘backwards’ or into the past,’ before the action pauses to allow Curtis to look back the other way — at where he came from and what could have been — before showing us his face.
It’s a clever edit to eclipse time, skipping basic training and then some with a single cut. More specifically it’s a commentary on America taking kids who aren’t old or wise enough for decisions on marriage and careers and love and sex, and forcing them to kill or be killed, and often both.
The next few minutes show Curtis narrowly escaping a land mine, holding a dying soldier, and witnessing several variations of racism and war atrocities. The match cut which takes Curtis from the Bronx to Vietnam insists we directly connect his wartime experiences to his loss of innocence and boyhood.
Car Ride
There are only so many ways to frame shot-reverse-shots in a car.
Dead Presidents does nothing unique with the blocking or angles; what it does is use setting to emphasise colour, and one particular prop as the cherry on top.
After taking a moment to show the red walls of the tunnel Curtis and Kirby (Keith David) drive into, the scene uses those red walls as backdrop, lights up the robins-egg-teal interior of the car, and uses intermittent yellow flashes as though from cars, to create distinct, strongly coloured frames-within-frames.
Oh and also to emphasise and light up Kirby’s leg.
Taking a Tumble
Everything’s copacetic before Cutty (Clifton Powell) sucker-punches Curtis.
The quick cuts and multiple odd angles give us some of Curtis’s disorientation at the surprise punch and tumble: the shots look like falling down the stairs feels.
A serious round of applause for this stuntie:
Only the last shot is Larenz Tate, sitting back hard into frame, then the camera lingering on his face as he processes the pain.
After a beat with Curtis, the scene gives a POV shot of Cutty coming down the stairs, the POV angle especially menacing because of how low Curtis has fallen.
The way Cutty and the gun move through shadows and light is gloriously menacing; as he gets closer the shot size doesn’t change, instead it moves down to focus on what is the most threatening thing, what takes up all Curtis’s attention: the gun.
Apocalypse Now
If you’re gonna reference one of the most infamous war movies of all time (and casting Martin Sheen as the uncredited judge in your final scene suggests you’re very much gonna), you better do it right.
The crossfade from Curtis’s tent light to the sun [0:06-0:09] is *chef’s kiss*
Top Down
Again Dead Presidents uses quick edits to put us in Curtis’s shoes.
Instead of a POV shot as the stairwell sequence used, this scene uses a camera move to push-and-zoom into his face; getting close to show his emotions but also feel how claustrophobic and trapped he is.
The next shot is a top-down showing how many, many people are crowded into this tiny hallway, pointing an unnecessary number of guns at Curtis and also each other.
This is perhaps an unusual choice to cut to from that closeup and personal shot, but makes sense in terms of the film overall:
of course it’s absurd, ridiculous, over-the-top, oppressive and inescapable
that’s the point.