"Boyz n the Hood" seems to pride itself as a morality play, but it's the characters that had me glued to the screen. Laurence Fishburne is magnetic, and I couldn't get enough of his sermonizing as a single father defiantly raising his kid in a hopeless world. And even though it's Cuba Gooding Jr.'s soul at stake throughout all of this, it's Ice Cube I really felt sympathy for in the end. At that point, for a rapper-cum-fledgling actor, he really brought out the sadness in his thug character.
Subtlety isn't the movie's strong suit, and that feeling of dread knots itself in your stomach right on cue. But Singleton does a great job saying that this isn't just a depressed (and violent) neighborhood - there are real people living here. And it says a lot that every time you see a low angle shot of palms, rundown street, plane flying overhead, you conjure this particular movie; even after all the imitators. A standard was set, certainly.
7/10.
Subtlety isn't the movie's strong suit, and that feeling of dread knots itself in your stomach right on cue. But Singleton does a great job saying that this isn't just a depressed (and violent) neighborhood - there are real people living here. And it says a lot that every time you see a low angle shot of palms, rundown street, plane flying overhead, you conjure this particular movie; even after all the imitators. A standard was set, certainly.
7/10.