Boyz N the Hood

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The film's title is taken from the name of a classic hip-hop song performed by Eazy-E as a member of the group N.W.A.

For the Southern rap quartet, see Boyz N Da Hood.

Boyz N the Hood is a 1991 film directed by African American director John Singleton. Starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Ice Cube, Laurence Fishburne, Nia Long and Morris Chestnut, the film depicts life in crime-ridden South Central (now South) Los Angeles, California, and incidentally was filmed and released shortly before the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.It was nominated for both Best Director and Original Screenplay during the 1991 Academy Awards. This made John Singleton the youngest person ever nominated for Best Director and the first African-American to be nominated for the award. The film is also credited with jumpstarting the careers of Laurence Fishburne and Cuba Gooding, Jr.

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

1 Cast
2 Plot summary
3 Themes
4 Quotes
5 Awards
6 External link

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Cast

Actor	Role
Laurence Fishburne	Furious Styles
Cuba Gooding Jr.	Tre Styles
Ice Cube	Darin "Doughboy" Baker
Morris Chestnut	Ricky Baker
Nia Long	Brandi
Angela Bassett	Reva Devereaux
Tyra Ferrell	Brenda Baker
Dedrick D. Gobert	Dooky

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

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Plot summary

In Boyz N the Hood, John Singleton portrays the life of three young black youths, Tre, Doughboy, and Ricky, as they grow up in South Central, Los Angeles. Tre Styles (Cuba Gooding Jr.) is an intelligent young student, but encounters disciplinary problems at a young age. His mother Reva Devereaux, decides it would be best for her son if Tre were to live with his father, Furious Styles. Furious is a no nonsense disciplinarian who teaches his son how to be a man. Tre begins his new life in South Central L.A. and reunites with old friends Doughboy (Ice Cube) and Ricky (Morris Chestnut). All three boys lead very different lives; Tre is an aspiring college man, Ricky an All-American high school football player, and Doughboy is a drug dealing gangsta. Boyz N the Hood offers a keen insight on racial inequality, drugs, sex, and gang violence in the hood.

One of the most powerful scenes of the movie occurs when Ricky is shot and killed by members of a local gang. The men who shoot Ricky wear red and black colors, possibly associating them with the Bloods; a large gang from the Los Angeles area. Tre, who is Ricky’s best friend, has to make a decision as to how he is going to react to Ricky’s murder. Will he seek violent revenge on Ricky’s murder, or will he realize that murdering another young african-american male will just add to the omnipresent violence taking place everyday around him? Tre chooses not to proceed with the murders of the men. Doughboy, unlike Tre, searches for and murders the men who did the same thing to his brother. Two weeks after Ricky's funeral, Doughboy is murdered.

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Themes

The most important theme is the benefit of a strong father figure on young black males. Of the three boys Tre, Ricky, and Doughboy, Tre is the only one whose 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. The decisions he makes, 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.)

Tre also grapples with the moral implications of teenage sexuality. As a young man, and due no doubt to peer pressure, it is important to lose one's virginity. Tre's girlfriend, Brandi, has strongly resisted Tre's demands to have sex with him, mostly due to her own beliefs as a Catholic. What becomes clear is that Tre has no wish to follow the same path as Ricky, who has fathered a son with his own girlfriend. Additionally, Tre's father gives him a tough lecture on the responsibilities and perils involved in becoming sexually active after Tre tells him a fabricated story about his first instance of sexual intercourse. The conversation comes about as the result of an off-handed remark Tre makes about his future children, a remark that causes some anxiety in his father who does not want to become a grandfather in his mid-30s.

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.

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Quotes

Doughboy: Either they don't know, don't show, or don't care about what's going on in the hood. They had all this foreign shit. They didn't have shit on my brother, man.

Furious Styles: I know every time you turn on the TV that’s what you see, Black People, pushing the rock, selling the rock, that's what you see. But see that wasn't a problem as long as it was here. It wasn't a problem until it was in Iowa or on Wall Street where there are hardly any black people.

Furious Styles: What I’m trying to do is teach you how to be responsible. It’s like your little friends across the street they don’t have anybody to show them how to do that, they don’t, and you’re going to see how they end up too.