Boyz n the Hood is a 1991 American hood film written and directed by John Singleton. Starring Ice Cube, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Morris Chestnut, Nia Long, Angela Bassett, Regina King and Laurence Fishburne, the film depicts life in poor South Central (now South) Los Angeles, California and was filmed and released in the summer of 1991. It was nominated for both Best Director and Original Screenplay during the 1991 Academy Awards, making Singleton the youngest person ever nominated for Best Director and the first African–American to be nominated for the award.

The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.^[2]

In 2002, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.^[3]

Plot summary

Before the opening scene of Boyz N' the Hood, two messages flash across the screen: "1 in 21 black males die of murder." and "Most will be killed by other black males."

South Central, Los Angeles; October, 1984

The story opens in 1984 with ten-year-old Tre Styles (Desi Arnez Hines II) and three other youths heading to school, on the way stopping to inspect a crime scene they encounter. At school, Tre misbehaves in front of his teacher and receives a three-day suspension after fighting with another classmate. While discussing the issues with his teacher, Tre's mother, Reva (Angela Bassett), elicits surprise from the teacher when she references her education as well as Tre's father, who the teacher had not realized existed. Frustrated with her inability to curtail Tre's history of disobedience, she sends him to live in the Crenshaw neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles with his hard-nosed father, Jason "Furious" Styles (Larry Fishburne), from whom she hopes Tre will learn life lessons.

Upon Tre's arrival, his father instructs him to rake the entire front lawn and assigns other household responsibilities, which include cleaning and maintaining their home. Furious explains that, although these tasks may seem unfair and harsh, learning responsibility will make Tre a man and keep him from ending up dead or in jail. Later, during his first night living with his father, Tre hears his father firing at a burglar. The police arrive more than an hour later and decide the crime is unimportant because nothing was taken and the burglar escaped unharmed.

The following day, Tre reunites with childhood friends Ricky (Donovan McCrary) and Darin, nicknamed Doughboy, Baker (Baha Jackson), and Chris (Kenneth A. Brown), a quiet and shy boy also living in the neighborhood. Ricky and Doughboy, half-brothers, live with their mother in a small house across the street. While Ricky is naïve and trusting, Doughboy is aggressive and street-smart. Later that day, while walking along train tracks to the site of a dead body, the three are harassed by a teenage gang, who steal Ricky's football. Doughboy picks a fight and is kicked in the stomach. The ball is later returned to Ricky by another older boy.

Furious, who appears to be the only father present in the neighborhood, takes Tre on a fishing trip, where he warns him about unprotected sex and discusses the responsibility of fatherhood. The pair then return to Crenshaw, where they find Doughboy and Chris being led by police officers into a squad car after having been caught stealing.

April, 1991

The film then fast-fowards seven years to a party in full swing at the Baker home. Doughboy (Ice Cube), who had previously dropped out of high school and joined the Crips, has just been released from prison and sits at a table playing dominoes with his friends, Chris (Redge Green), now in a wheelchair, presumably as the result of a gunshot wound, Dookie, and Monster. Ricky (Morris Chestnut), a star running-back for Crenshaw High, lives at home with his mother Brenda (Tyra Ferrell), girlfriend Shanice (Alysia Rogers), and his newborn son. Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr.), who holds a steady job and has stayed away from pushing drugs, arrives at the party and is greeted by Brenda, who asks him to try to pass some of his responsible behavior to Doughboy, though Tre does not bother to do so.

Although he is still a virgin, during a discussion with his father, Tre boasts about an incident in which he had unprotected sex. Far from being impressed, Furious berates his son for not using protection. Tre hopes to attend college as does his girlfriend Brandi (Nia Long), whose sexual abstinence is part of her faith.

A college football coach from USC visits Ricky one night for an interview; Brenda kicks Doughboy and his friends out onto the porch where they discuss first college, then girls. Meanwhile, the coach promises Ricky an athletic scholarship at USC if he earns a minimum SAT score of 700. Ricky struggles during the test, looking often at Tre for help, and seems unsure of passing. Later that day, Furious tells the boys that the English section of the test is culturally biased and only the math is fair.

Furious later takes the boys to Compton, discussing gentrification with them and a group of citizens, explaining how violence and drug use divide the black community by decreasing property values, allowing real estate companies to buy the land cheaply from black residents and sell it at a profit to developers. The influx of white investment money raises property values and taxes, pushing out the remaining old residents in the process. Furious tells the crowd that the rest of the nation will not help the urban poor because they are not personally affected by the violence, and that blacks must end the cycle of violence plaguing the neighborhoods themselves.

Later that night, when Ricky is provoked into a fight by a member of the Bloods named Ferris (Raymond D. Turner), Doughboy draws a pistol to defend his brother and the whole scene degenerates into gunfire, though nobody is hurt. While speeding away from the scene, Tre and Ricky are pulled over by the LAPD. One officer is the same officer who responded to Furious's 911 burglary call years before. He is a self-hating African-American cop who, enjoying fully the power his badge allows him, shoves a gun in Tre's face and asks him what he will do about it. On the verge of tears Tre arrives late to Brandi's house; later that night they have sex for the first time.

The next day, Ricky, annoyed when Shanice tells him to go get a box of cornmeal, provokes a fight with Doughboy. Brenda rushes to Ricky's aid while berating Doughboy, further indicating that she values Ricky and his impending scholarship more than she does Doughboy. Ricky and Tre later head to the grocery store, but on the way back run across Ferris and his friends. They run through a back garden and into an alleyway hoping to get away from them. They think they do, however Ferris drives the car around the street to block them off. Tre and Ricky decide to split up and see each other later. Meanwhile, Doughboy realizes that Ricky and Tre might be in danger after noticing Ferris watching him from down the street earlier on, and he and his friends immediately head out to try and find them. As Tre walks home, he looks back just in time to see Ferris and his friends pull out in front of Ricky. He attempts to run from them, but he is gunned down with a double-barreled shotgun. Doughboy and his friends soon pull up to find Tre crying over Ricky's dead body. They bring Ricky's blood-soaked body home in Doughboy's car. Brenda immediately blames Doughboy, who tries to comfort her but is rebuffed; he then attempts to remove Ricky's son from the room where his father lies dead. Later that night, Brenda sobs over Ricky's test results, discovering he earned a 710, just enough to qualify for the scholarship.

Doughboy, Dookie, Monster, and Tre vow revenge on the enemy gang. Furious finds Tre holding his .357 Magnum pistol and convinces Tre to abandon his plans. Tre later sneaks out of his bedroom window to join Doughboy and the gang as they search for Ferris. Later that night, as the gang drives around the city, Tre realizes he is making a mistake and asks to be let out of the car. Doughboy pulls over and lets Tre out at a bus stop. Later, the gang finds Ferris and his friends outside a fast food restaurant, and gun them down with an AK47 in a drive-by shooting, killing one and wounding the others. Doughboy hops out of the lowrider and finishes Ferris and the other Blood gangs off with his .45, exacting full revenge for his brother's death.

The next morning, as Tre sits on his porch eating breakfast, Doughboy explains that he has no hard feelings about Tre's decision to leave the car before the shooting, reasoning that Tre shouldn't have been there in the first place. Doughboy then estimates he is soon likely to be killed in retaliation for Ferris' death, partially resigned to his fate and despondent about the overall situation in the neighborhood. Through their discussion, Doughboy seems to have changed, realizing that his gang activities played a part in the ongoing violence in the ghetto. Doughboy's appearance is markedly different, as he is dressed in shorts and slippers, minus his customary baseball cap. He also notes that it's been a long time since he's been awake and outside so early in the morning, and berates a drug-addicted neighbor who begs him for a score.

An epilogue states that Doughboy is murdered two weeks after Ricky's funeral, but that both Tre and Brandi go on to college at Morehouse and Spelman in Atlanta.

Credits

At the end of the movie, there is a label that reads, " Boyz 'N The Hood", and below it, it says, "Increase the peace." The text then fades away and Ice Cube's Song, which begins with an edited acapella line, How to Survive in South Central, plays.

Cast

• Cuba Gooding, Jr. (Desi Arnez Hines II, young) as Tre Styles, son of Furious and Crenshaw High School senior
• Laurence Fishburne as Jason 'Furious' Styles, father of Tre
• Ice Cube (Baha Jackson, young) as Darrin (Doughboy) Baker, half-brother of Ricky
• Morris Chestnut (Donovan McCrary, young) as Ricky Baker, half-brother of Doughboy and all-star football player at Crenshaw High School, Tre's best friend
• Nia Long as Brandi, Tre's girlfriend
• Tyra Ferrell as Brenda Baker, mother of Doughboy, Ricky and Anaclair
• Angela Bassett as Reva Devereaux-Styles, mother of Tre
• Redge Green (Kenneth A. Brown, young) as Chris
• Dedrick D. Gobert as Dookie
• Lexie Bigham as Monster
• Tracey Lewis-Sinclair as Shaniqua
• Alysia Rogers as Shanice, Ricky's girlfriend, and mother of his son.
• Regina King as Shalika

Themes

The most important theme is the benefit of a strong father figure on young black males. Of Tre, Ricky, and Doughboy, only Tre's father is present in his everyday life (Ricky and Doughboy, though brothers, have different fathers). He leads a very different life than his two friends because of his father's guidance. His decisions, especially not to partake in the revenge of Ricky's death, happen because of the morals instilled in him.

The film also deals largely with the seemingly unstoppable violence that plagues urban life. It is set in South Central Los Angeles, where Tre's father owns a house. The neighborhood is a violent one; the sounds of shootings and patrolling helicopters are heard often and even something as common as a passing car can mean death. The police that patrol the neighborhood seem indifferent to the notion of preventing crime. Early in the film Furious frightens off a would-be thief with the pistol he keeps under his bed. The police, arriving an hour after Furious' call, do not seem concerned about the effect of the crime on the people they are supposed to protect. Additionally, the African American officer possesses a combative personality and has a tense exchange with Furious about the proper execution of his job. (As a teenager, Tre is pulled over by the same policeman while fleeing gunfire on Crenshaw Avenue and the officer threatens him with his pistol, an act of police misconduct. This officer was based on a self-loathing black officer encountered by John Singleton while growing up in South Central Los Angeles.) The officer's remarks to Tre's father at the beginning of the movie (the officer wishes Furious's shot would have killed the man) show that law enforcement is lazy and corrupt. Perhaps the lack of police justice is one reason for the climactic scene at the end of the movie with Doughboy and Ferris. Doughboy hesitates before killing the gang leader, however he knows that justice will not be served unless he takes matters into his own hands.

Other themes present but not covered as extensively include gentrification of poor neighborhoods, drug abuse, assault weapons, equality in college admission, and cultural bias in standardized testing.

Reception

Since the film's release, Boyz n the Hood has received overwhelmingly positive reviews. Based on 45 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, Boyz n the Hood has an overall approval rating of 98%, with a weighted average score of 8.4/10.^[4] By comparison, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews from mainstream critics, calculated an average score of 73 out of 100 from the 18 reviews it collected.^[5]

Awards

Academy Awards: 1992

• Nominee, Best Director, John Singleton
• Nominee, Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen, John Singleton

BMI Film Music Award: 1992

• Winner, Stanley Clarke

Image Award: 1993

• Winner, Outstanding Motion Picture, Boyz n the Hood

MTV Movie Award: 1992

• Nominee, Best Movie, Boyz n the Hood
• Winner, Best New Filmmaker, John Singleton

National Film Preservation Board, USA: 2002

• National Film Registry, Boyz n the Hood

New York Film Critics Circle Award: 1991

• Winner, Best New Director, John Singleton

Political Film Society, USA: 1992

• Winner, PFS Award, Peace
• Nominee, PFS Award, Exposé
• Nominee, PFS Award, Human Rights

Writers Guild of America, USA: 1992

• Nominee, WGA Award (Screen), Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen, John Singleton

Young Artist Awards: 1992^[6]

• Winner, Young Artist Award, Outstanding Young Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture

In 2007, Boyz n the Hood was selected as one of the 50 Films To See Before You Die by Channel 4.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack for Boyz n the Hood was released on July 9, 1991 by Qwest Records. It reached #12 on the Billboard 200 chart, and #1 on the Billboard's Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, and attained gold status.^{[citation needed]}

References

External links

• Boyz n the Hood at the Internet Movie Database
• Boyz n the Hood at Allmovie
• Boyz n the Hood at Box Office Mojo
• Boyz n the Hood at Rotten Tomatoes
• Boyz n the Hood at Metacritic