In 2002, the US Library of Congress deemed the film “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. It’s just that no one had an AK in Stand by Me. Scratch below the gunplay and the music, both films share much DNA, which may explain the film’s colour-blind appeal. Why? They want us to kill ourselves.”įamously, Boyz N the Hood is bookended by references to Stand by Me. The dialogue is hilarious, loaded, questioning: “Why is it every time you talk about a female you gotta say bitch, ho or hootchie?” “Why is it that there is a gun shop on almost every corner in this community? For the same reason that there is a liquor store on almost every corner in the black community.
Singleton’s desire for realism meant he was not above firing a round if it kept the cast on its toes. In an entertainingly verbose film, composed of yarn-telling, trash-talking and wise words, the sudden outbursts of violence are calibrated to startle. Instead, it is a clever, multifaceted thing. It might have just been another decent pop movie, occupying the same space that Quadrophenia does for Mods. John Singleton was just 23 when wrote and directed the era-defining Boyz N the Hood (1991), a film that would bring him to Cannes and the Academy Awards, where he became the youngest ever nominee – and the first African-American – to be shortlisted for best director. There is constant friction in the ’hood as tensions rise between Crips and Bloods, but there is seldom friction at home, where Fishburne’s patriarch philosophises and chills – think Morpheus without the goth coat. In common with most teenage boys in coming-of-age dramas, Tre hopes to get some from his chaste girlfriend Brandi (Nia Long). Although his hard-nosed father instills proper values and respect in him, and his devout girlfriend Brandi (Nia Long) teaches him about faith, Tres friends Doughboy (Ice Cube) and Ricky (Morris Chestnut. Tre soon finds companionship with the titular boyz, including Doughboy (Ice Cube), who grows up to be a Crip Chris, another Crip, who is confined to a wheelchair after a gunshot wound and Ricky (Morris Chestnut), a star football player with a chance of a college scholarship. Writer/Director John Singleton, actors Cuba Gooding, Jr., Angela Bassett, Morris Chestnut, Nia Long, Tyra Ferrell, former Columbia Pictures executive Stephan. Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr.) is sent to live with his father, Furious Styles (Larry Fishburne), in tough South Central Los Angeles. When Tre Styles (Desi Arnez Hines II, and later Cuba Gooding Jr) gets in a fight at school, his divorced mother (Angela Bassett) sends him to live with his father, Furious (Laurence Fishburne), in South Los Angeles.