Product Description

BOYZ N THE HOOD is the critically acclaimed story of three friends growing up in a South Central Los Angeles neighborhood and of street life where friendship pain danger and love combine to form reality. "The Hood" is a place where drive-by shootings and unemployment are rampant. But it is also a place where harmony coexists with adversity especially for three young men growing up there: Doughboy (Ice Cube) an unambitious drug dealer; his brother Ricky (Morris Chestnut) a college-bound teenage father; and Ricky's best friend Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr.) who aspires to a brighter future beyond "The Hood." In a world where a trip to the store can end in death the friends have diverse reactions to their bleak surroundings. Tre's resolve is strengthened by a strong father (Larry Fishburne) who keeps him on the right track. But the lessons Tre learns are put to the ultimate test when tragedy strikes close to home and violence seems like the only recourse.System Requirements:Running Time: 112 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 043396073197 Manufacturer No: 07319

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11710 in DVD
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2003-09-02
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 112 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
John Singleton, at the age of 23, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for his debut film, Boyz N the Hood. The film stars Laurence Fishburne, Angela Basset, Ice Cube, and Academy Award-winning actor Cuba Gooding Jr. in his first starring role in a feature film. Gooding plays Tre Styles, a teenager growing up in South Central Los Angeles. His father, Furious (Fishburne), is divorced and living away from Tre and his mother (Basset), but he's still involved in Tre's upbringing, teaching him the values of right and wrong and responsibility. Meanwhile, Tre's childhood buddies Ricky (Morris Chestnut) and Doughboy (Ice Cube) are living their lives in terms of the epidemic of violence and poverty that has plagued their neighborhood. Ricky, a talented football player, strives to get a full athletic scholarship to college. If only his SAT scores were higher. Doughboy lives a life full of crime but still remains true to his friends. The obstacles that these three young men come across result in dire consequences, devastatingly avoidable and inevitable at the same time. Boyz N the Hood is a landmark film beyond its commercial success, presenting a portrait of South Central in the late '80s and early '90s as painted by Singleton (who grew up in that neighborhood), achieving accuracy and dramatic resonance in this story of at-risk youth. --Shannon Gee

From The New Yorker
The writer and director, John Singleton, is a twenty-three-year-old graduate of the U.S.C. film school. This movie, his first, is a classically constructed-and therefore rather predictable-coming-of-age drama about young black men growing up on the mean streets of south central Los Angeles. The picture conveys a vivid sense of the dangers, both physical and emotional, of day-to-day existence in this ravaged urban environment. Even the quietest domestic scenes are charged with a kind of battlefront tension: there's always the ominous metronomic beat of police helicopters in the background, and sudden sputters of gunfire seem to intrude on every moment of calm or reflection. It's a war zone, and its inhabitants-the people on the front lines-mostly don't have the luxury of planning long-range survival strategies: they're too busy reacting to the immediate, unremitting daily threats. Singleton's evocation of real people's struggles to find some measure of peace and sanity in these grim urban circumstances is heartfelt and often moving, and the movie provides a welcome corrective to the dehumanizing sensationalism of the local-news version of inner-city life. But the young filmmaker's professionalism and precocious self-assurance sometimes work against his best instinct. Singleton's plot is disappointingly conventional; it obeys screenwriting-class rules. The experience he's dealing with here deserves something more than the tidy dramatic structure that he has imposed on it. We get glimpses of what the movie might have been in the complex, magnetic performance of Ice Cube, a rap star (formerly of N.W.A.), who plays a neighborhood gangster type named Doughboy. Also with Cuba Gooding, Jr., Larry Fishburne, Nia Long, Tyra Ferrell, and Angela Bassett. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

RIICCKKYY!!!!!!
i just recently watched this movie again for the first time in years and enjoyed it all over again.

I must have missed something?
Well everybody told me to watch this movie, so I did. I live in the Netherlands, Europe so you know. I have been to compton once by mistake and south-central by choice. So if you do not like my review blame it on the fact that I am European and I do not know what I am talking about.

The movie overall strikes me as totally non realistic with flying helicopters and firing smg's all the time. Sure it is not the best neighbourhood to live in, but come on it is not a warzone.

The story is told already like a thousand times. A good kid winds up in a bad neighbourhood. He almost goes on the criminal path but... rappapa big surprise surprise he does not he goes to college and so does his his girl. His friend also understand this choice after shooting 3 people in cold blood.

In all its to much over the top for me. I think the movie tries to be a drama but for me it is more like a parody on itsself. The key message being having a good parent the father in this case will avoid getting youre kid being a gangster. So this movie unwillingly blames the black community for their own gangsters. They try to blame it on "the man" in the part where his father takes his son to compton and explaines how the system works. Well you must be a complete moron to believe the theory that the system wants to get drugs to the afro american community so they can kill themselves. The point in all bad neighbourhoods is poverty and that little o so important message is being missed here! Such a shame.

Probably the white community in Beverly Hills is shocked by all the N, B, and H words and I can imagine them thinking "yeah this is really really realistic, o my gosh" Well if you want something realistic watch a documentary!

What anoys me the most is the afro-american hating cop, what is the chance of meeting one of those? Sure its the frustration of the producer which is forced upon us. But I really did not ask for him to do so. Also there is a lack of background about the individuals in this story, why did they turn out the way they did? Cant blame everything on the parents, that would be to easy.

I must say the acting is not that bad. But that is the only positive thing I can say about this movie.

Mr. Movie Maniac
This is a movie I already owned , but a neighbor of mine wanted a copy,so I purchased one for him. The story relates very closely to events that have happened in real life. I highly recommend it.