It's South-Central LA after the 1984 Summer Olympics. Tre (Desi Arnez Hines II) and brothers Ricky (Donovan McCrary) and Doughboy (Baha Jackson) are ten-year-old African-American friends belonging to single-parent households, who've grown up amidst police brutality, gang violence and poverty. When Tre's temper gives his mother Reva (Angela Bassett) no alternative, she leaves him in the care of his working father Jason "Furious" Styles (Laurence Fishburne), who teaches Tre everything he knows about being a responsible, upstanding young man. Now jump forward to 1991. Tre (Cuba Gooding, Jr. in his breakthrough role) is now a high school senior who's working and applying to college while wooing Brandi (Nia Long). Eager to escape the 'hood, Tre nonetheless still associates with his friends there. Doughboy (an unexpectedly moving Ice Cube) is a horny couch potato who thus now tests his own mother's patience, while Ricky (Morris Chestnut), the apple of her eye, is establishing himself as a successful college football draft. Tre does forge a life beyond the hood he grew up in, but not before a serious of tragedies befall him and his mates.
Boyz N the Hood made John Singleton, at 24, the youngest person ever nominated for a Best Director Academy Award, the first African-American to be nominated and the first director to be nominated for their feature debut (he was even also nominated for his screenplay). Do you feel insubordinate yet? Well, he richly deserved both nods. Obviously drawn from his own adolescent experiences and the conscience they informed, Boyz N the Hood pulls no punches as it lifts the veil on late-20th-century black life and particularly the intraracial violence of that which sadly continues 27 years later. Singleton makes his message very pointed but never preaches it because, maybe given his age when he made it, he infuses his film visually with a pulsating energy and equally emphasises the more intimate moments which I think are universal (I mean, who hasn't had these sort of lifelong friends?). His characters are all utterly realistic because unlike the common black stereotypes, they don't talk purely in hip hop language or like they're trying to be white. They just talk, and connect.
And they are all played outstandingly. Furious remains one of Fishburne's best roles and he gives him all the stern warmth you'd expect in a devoted father, Ice Cube (who, of course, was then in the rap group N.W.A.) is actually even better as he gives Doughboy a great deal of buried lacking confidence to explain his lifestyle, and Gooding, Jr. holds his own against both. But stealing the whole show for me is Bassett, with probably the most cliched character (a feisty black mum). Where a less-experienced actress might've made Reva diva-ish, Bassett keeps the assertiveness dignified for more class and sympathy. She's just a joy to watch.
The soundtrack by Stanley Clarke and Ice Cube also helps to maintain the sense of danger mixed with camaraderie throughout. Singleton's subsequent career hasn't quite reached the heights he did here, but cinema this good is no fluke, and in accepting the torch from predecessors like Spike Lee with Boyz N the Hood he sparked a wave of a successful African-American coming-of-age and hood movies that has continued right through to this decade, with ones like Hustle & Flow (2005) and the Oscar-winning Moonlight (2016).
And they are all played outstandingly. Furious remains one of Fishburne's best roles and he gives him all the stern warmth you'd expect in a devoted father, Ice Cube (who, of course, was then in the rap group N.W.A.) is actually even better as he gives Doughboy a great deal of buried lacking confidence to explain his lifestyle, and Gooding, Jr. holds his own against both. But stealing the whole show for me is Bassett, with probably the most cliched character (a feisty black mum). Where a less-experienced actress might've made Reva diva-ish, Bassett keeps the assertiveness dignified for more class and sympathy. She's just a joy to watch.
The soundtrack by Stanley Clarke and Ice Cube also helps to maintain the sense of danger mixed with camaraderie throughout. Singleton's subsequent career hasn't quite reached the heights he did here, but cinema this good is no fluke, and in accepting the torch from predecessors like Spike Lee with Boyz N the Hood he sparked a wave of a successful African-American coming-of-age and hood movies that has continued right through to this decade, with ones like Hustle & Flow (2005) and the Oscar-winning Moonlight (2016).
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