John Singleton's film Boyz N the Hood is a film with an inherent ideological position, though the film is not polemical in its structure and instead develops real characters and situations which serve as a window to a particular world and a particular problem. The viewer is then left to make up his or her mind about what has been seen, though the deadly nature of the world presented encourages the viewer to react with some form of righteous indignation that black youth are faced with such pressures and such terrors.
The 'hood of the title is the neighborhood in which young Tre Styles grows up, a neighborhood in South-Central Los Angeles. The script covers about seven years in the boy's life, beginning in the mid-1980s. The problems of urban crime in black neighborhoods is evoked in the title cards at the beginning emphasizing how many young black males are murdered and the fact that most are murdered by other young black males. Tre is the central character, and also important are his two friends, the brothers Ricky and Doughboy. Tre is 10 years old when his mother decides that he needs a man's influence, so she hands him over to her ex-husband, Furious Styles. She hopes that the father will be able to teach the boy what he needs to know to be a man and to resist the forces in the neighborhood which push boys the wrong way. Furious does try to be a good father, and he plays ball with the boy, takes him on long walks, talks to him, and offers him lessons in life. The father is somewhat stern, but he is also loving and reasonable. The relationship between Tre and his father is balanced with a story of growing gang violence and what it does to Tre's two friends.
This film might sound like a story that has been told many times, but there is a fresh voice behind this script that makes the material seem very new and very different. The writer has created strong characters and obviously knows this milieu intimately. He shows ...