Tre Styles (10) caused trouble once again in school, defying his teacher during class, and thus his divorced mother Reva sends him to live at the house of his father, Furious, at South Central Los Angeles. Seven years later. Tre (17) is an intelligent teenager and intends to go to college, as well as his friend, Ricky, but their other friend Doughboy is a gang member. Tre is also in a relationship with Brandi. After a dispute with Ferris, a member of a rival gang, Ricky is shot from the back by Ferris in a car. Tre wants to avenge Ricky's death, but his dad persuades him to not endanger his own life. Doughboy and his friends drive in a car that night, find and shoot Ferris and his gang. Doughboy then talks to Tre and is willing to accept the consequences of his actions.
"Boyz n the Hood" was one of the more notable 'hood films' of the 90s, depicting the African-American lower class and their subculture with very bitter details, full of realism, but also in an intelligent, earnest and emotional manner. Director and screenwriter John Singleton added several auto-biographical elements, though he did not fully escape some cliches of that subgenre, including the depiction of primitivism among some characters, or a few melodramatic moments. The opening act sets up a great mood: during a class at an elementary school, the teacher explains Thanksgiving to the kids, adding that it was established by the "Pilgrims", but Tre (10) cannot resist to say a wisecrack joke and calls them "Penguins", upon which the class erupts in laughter. The teacher then invites Tre to go to the blackboard and teach the kids himself, if he knows everything. The consequences echo even at his home, when the mother, Reva, reminds Tre of their contract in which he vowed not to get into trouble at school or he will live at his father's place, even adding Tre the paper he signed himself. This half-an-hour opening act is wonderful, but the main segment, involving around a teenage Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr.) somehow never repeats that high impression from the first act and lacks inspiration. The rest of the story is good, though not that outstanding. The best job was delivered by excellent Laurence Fishburne as father Furious, who becomes Tre's mentor and gives him wisdom, nurturing him away from street gangs and drugs. Furious even goes to ask Tre if he already had sex, upon which Tre tells him a ludicrous story about how he was sleeping with a girl, but had to flee when her grandmother returned home from church. Later on, however, Tre admits to a friend he is still a virgin, terrified of the idea of having a baby. The episodic story is rather conventional and its ending anticlimactic, yet it has sense in depicting a deeper theme of an individual trying to break away from the bleak limitations of his environment, and its determinism.
Grade:++
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