Freeview film of the day : saturday 5th of september

Boyz N The Hood (1991 112min.) [BBC2 11.10pm]
Written and driected by John Singleton.

"Increase the peace "

Two line synopsis : the parallel lives of two young black men and the way in which the choices you make can alter your life.

Two line review : a truly outstanding film, with plenty to say, great script, some very fine performances and a killer soundtrack.


John Singleton's debut feature was an assured and committed film reflecting the lives of boys growing up amid the chaos and confusion of Reaganite America.Set in south central Los Angles we follow Tré (Cuba Gooding), Ricky (Morris Chestnut) and Doughboy (Ice Cube) as they turn from children to street urchins to young men with destinies.

In a remarkable, concise style Singleton let's us eavesdrop on the boys growing up and witness the way in which the choices they make each step along the way will, in the end, come to shape their futures.

It's a film bursting with ideas and with plenty to say, but very seldom do you get the feeling that you're being lectured. Too many films ( both of this time and later) that attempted to look at the state of the States ended up as finger wagging polemic or just plain dull.

Singleton sets out to tell a story, albeit a story with a purpose and a moral, but each of the central characters does have a story arc and the film remains true to itself at all times. At no point do we think "s/he wouldn't have done that" - nor do we feel like we're being insulted or patronised for not being part of the target audience.

It's not a seperatist film, the film (rightly) condones the idea that black-on-black killing is an acceptable thing and challenges a lot of the preconceptions that the audience would bring with them.

Tré's father is played by Laurence Fishburne in his first leading role. Jason Styles , known to all as Furious, is a man deeply steeped in the history of the black man in the US , radicalised by the Civil Rights movement. At the time of the film we find him operating a home loans company, aiming to provide funds for his black customers to move on up.

It's to (the excellent) Fishburne that the script turns to deliver it's one moment of out and out politicising. Taking Tré and Ricky into Compton, in an attempt to show them the eternal truth of "the other man's grass is always more yellow", he begins a street corner sermon on the lot of the black in (then) present day America.
As he warms to his theme a small crowd gathers and an imprompteu Q&A / call and response is set in motion.

[referring to drug epidemic] I know every time you turn on the TV thats 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 [referring to Compton, Watts, other Black ghettos] It wasn't a problem until it was in Iowa or on Wall Street where there are hardly any black people.

And this is the central message of the film - the young characters are in need of someone like "Furious" to point these things out to them. For all the clamour in the popular US press the sad truth is that then (and now) the people who were in the centre of all this shit were the very same ones that were most cut off from any sense of why they were who they were or where they were.
Doughboy says : Tre, your pops is like muthafuckin Malcolm... Farrakhan
He knows the names, he knows that they are people to be listened to, but in his juiced up brain all that they amount to is a jumble of vaguely related names.

A word on the soundtrack. Superb, especially the use of Ice's "How To Survive In South Central" and Dr.Buzzard's "Sun Shower"

The poster tagline "increase the peace" is also the last words on the screen when the credits stop rolling - this was the writer/director's plea and, to an extent, he got his wish.

Sadly, a director this talented couldn't stay outside the mainstrean's radar for long and he ends up working on the reamke of Shaft (2000) and the truly awful 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) - nice irony in the title.

But in 1991 John Singleton wrote and directed one of the most astonishing debut features since Citizen Kane. I trust that is enough to make you watch the film next time you get the chance.