Boyz n The Hood (1991)

Boyz n The Hood (1991)

In writer/director John Singleton's (and Columbia Pictures') crime drama (his directorial debut film), it was essentially a coming-of-age, semi-autobiographical film about hoods growing up in South Central LA. Spike Lee's landmark black-oriented films in the 80s inspired a new generation of African-American film-makers, including 23 year-old John Singleton, who soon joined Lee as an influential black moviemaker in the early 1990s.

The ghetto drama followed the lives of three hoods (Tre, Doughboy, and Ricky) growing up in South Central LA, marked by gang violence, economic hardship, and police brutality. Ties to the 'hood endangered the lives of the inner city friends, who made efforts to escape the cycle of poverty and violence in their communities. In the climactic scene after a drive-by shooting, gangbanger Darrin 'Doughboy' Baker (rap star Ice Cube in his screen debut) carried his half-brother Ricky's (Morris Chestnut) dead body home to their mother (Tyra Ferrell). Mirroring the film itself, some violence and trouble between gang members occurred when the incendiary movie opened in various theaters.

It was nominated for two Academy Awards, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Director. On a budget of only 6ドル.5 million, It became one of the highest-grossing films ever directed by an African-American, with gross revenues of 57ドル.5 million. With his film, Singleton became the youngest nominee for Best Director in Academy history, and the first African-American to be nominated as Best Director.

• divorced, strict and overbearing father Jason 'Furious' Styles (Laurence Fishburne), in South Central LA (the Crenshaw District), lectured his underachieving, hot-tempered son Tre Styles (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) about how any punk kid could have sex:
  • "Well, remember this: Any fool with a dick can make a baby, but only a real man can raise his children"
• a lengthy, enlightening discussion was led by Tre's father to Ricky, Tre and other neighbors who gathered around - about "gentrification" - or decreasing property values:
  • "Gentrification. It's what happens when the property value of a certain area is brought down. You listening?...They bring the property value down. They can buy the land at a lower price. Then they move all the people out, raise the property value and sell it at a profit. Now, what we need to do is we need to keep everything in our neighborhood, everything, black. Black-owned with black money. Just like the Jews, the Italians, the Mexicans and the Koreans do"
• at the conclusion of Tre's father's impromptu lecture, he was questioned about the real cause of lower property values - their self-destructive neighborhood:
  • "If you want to talk about, uh, guns, why is it that there's a gun shop on almost every corner in this community?... I'll tell you why. For the same reason that there's a liquor store on almost every corner in the black community. Why? They want us to kill ourselves. You go out to Beverly Hills, you don't see that s--t. But they want to us to kill ourselves. Yeah, the best way you can destroy a people - you take away their ability to reproduce themselves. Who is it that's dyin' out here on these streets every night? Y'all...Young brothers like yourselves"
• in the film's most shocking scene, promising football star running back Ricky Baker (Morris Chestnut) at Crenshaw HS - the half-brother of aspiring gang-banger, Crip gang member and dope-dealer Darrin 'Doughboy' Baker (rap star Ice Cube), was gunned down by the Bloods rival gang in an alleyway - viewed by Tre in horror

• Tre contemplated seeking revenge for Ricky's murder by getting a .357 Magnum and loading it, thereby jeopardizing his entire future, before being confronted by his father:
  • "Tre, what are you doing? Huh? Oh, oh, you bad, now, huh? You bad. You gotta shoot somebody now, huh? Well, here I am. Come on, shoot me. You bad, right? Look, I'm sorry about your friend. My heart goes out to his mother and his family, but that's their problem, Tre. You my son. You my problem. Now I want you to give me the gun. Oh, I see, you wanna end up like little Chris in a wheelchair. Right? No, no, you want to end up like Doughboy, huh? No? GIVE ME THE MOTHERF--KIN' GUN, TRE. You're my only son, and I'm not gonna lose you to no bulls--t, you hear? I love you, man"
• in another crushing scene, Tre and Doughboy took Ricky's lifeless body home to his hysterical and distraught single mother Brenda Baker (Tyra Ferrell), who afterwards learned that Ricky had scored high enough on his SATs to qualify for a USC scholarship
• in the film's last scene, Doughboy (who had sought deadly revenge for Ricky's killing) told Tre that he truly understood why he didn't get involved in avenging Ricky's death, and his personal denouncement of TV news and its lack of care for the violence-ridden ghetto:
  • "I know why you got out of the car last night. You shouldn't have been there in the first place. You don't want that s--t to come back to haunt you. I ain't been up this early in a long time. Turned on the TV this morning. Had this s--t on about how we're living in a violent, a violent world. Showed all these foreign places. How foreigners live and all. I started thinkin', man. Either they don't know, don't show or don't care about what's goin' on in the 'hood. They had all this foreign s--t. They didn't have s--t on my brother, man. I ain't got no brother. Got no mother, neither. She loved that fool more than she love me."
• Doughboy's prediction about the continuation of violence was accurate (he was gunned down two weeks later)