American Me

Teens break into a bar. One is shot in the leg by the proprietor. A teenage prisoner rapes a new teenage prisoner in juvie at knifepoint. When he's finished, the other teen fights back and kills his rapist, earning another prison term. Prisoners get a fellow prisoner drunk, then rape and kill him. People are stabbed and shot. Someone is shot in the genitals, although the wound is off-screen. A man is surrounded by attackers who repeatedly stab him until he dies. After, he's thrown over a balcony. White sailors gang rape a Mexican American woman after beating her boyfriend. A prison inmate is deliberately doused with gasoline and set on fire in his cell. A man is strangled with a rope. Prisoners are body-searched and asked to hold their "nut-sacks" and "d--ks," and to spread their "cheeks." A gang kills other gang members by forcing them to inhale lethal amounts of cocaine. A man and woman have mutually consensual sex until he enters her from behind despite her objection, and it turns into rape.

Sex is mostly used as a method of violence. Prisoners' nude buttocks are briefly seen. A woman on a toilet pulls drugs out of an orifice.

Frequent use of curse words: "f--k," "s--t," "ass," "bastard," "bitch," "d--k," "nut-sack," "damn," and "wop." Ethnic slurs are used.

Teens and kids use drugs and drink alcohol. A child is seen sniffing glue from a bag. Drugs are smuggled into prison. Prisoners drink alcohol and have drunken parties in prison. Characters smoke cigarettes. Armed marauders break into a group of drug dealers packaging cocaine and force the dealers to inhale lethal amounts of the drug, resulting in murders. A teenager dies of an overdose with a needle in his arm. Italian Mafia dealers spread uncut drugs through the East Los Angeles community, targeting Mexican drug users and causing many deaths. A man is seen lubricating a balloon full of contraband drugs to insert, presumably into his anus for smuggling. A man who has had too much to drink goes off to throw up.

Parents need to know that American Me is a 1992 saga about a Mexican American youth from the Los Angeles barrio who falls in with the local gangs and becomes a drug kingpin from inside prison. There his brutality and brains combine to make him a player on the outside. Violence is ever-present and graphic. Even among gang members, loyalty is jettisoned in favor of expedience. The movie aims to show how few options are available to kids growing up in poverty and victimized by racism and anti-Mexican bias, but doesn't glamorize the option some choose -- a life of crime. Multiple stabbings, shootings, rapes (male-on-female and male-on-male) and other horrors are showcased and treated as a normal part of the life depicted here. Drug and alcohol abuse is rife among kids and adults. Kids are inducted into gangs and taught to kill at an early age. In addition to violence, drug use, and frequent language, the narrative is bleak and hopeless. Most of this is in English with moments of Spanish, some of it un-subtitled. Language includes "f--k," "s--t," "ass," "bastard," "bitch," "d--k," "nut-sack," "damn," and "wop."

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