#5 Boyz N the Hood

    The movie I have in the number 5 spot of my top ten favorite movies list is Boyz N the Hood. The movie is at the number 5 spot on my list because it is one of my favorite dramas. From the acting to the plot, the movie is truly great. What makes Boyz N the Hood so good is the fact that they directly explored the nature of the problem while also humanizing its characters as more than the causalities of wanton violence, drug use, and death. These characters aren't teenage parents, alcoholics, and gang members out of choice, but because they have been told there's no other option.

 

    Black and in their late teens, Tre, Doughboy and Ricky - the latter two half-brothers - have hung out together since they were kids, they are doing so more after Tre's mother, Reva, seven years ago sent him, bright but adversarial, to live with his father, Furious, in the Crenshaw district of South Central Los Angeles across the street from the other two living with their single mother. The move was for Furious to show Tre what it means to have a sense of responsibility as a black male, especially in an atmosphere of black male violence against each other that pervades their neighborhoods. Furious, an independent financial adviser working in the neighborhood, believes that the urban black problems within which they live, including this violence and crime, is only fostered by the white majority. That move to live with Furious largely resulted in Tre having that responsibility in he now wanting to head off to college for a better life with his Catholic girlfriend Brandi, who has resisted the pressure of having sex in wanting to wait until the "inevitability" of she and Tre getting married. Ricky, already married with a child - the marriage because of the baby - is also aiming for a better life for his young family. A high school football star, Ricky is resting his dreams on a football scholarship. However, in not being sure he can meet the minimum SAT requirement of 700, he is sketching out a less than ideal Plan B considering that focus on his young family. Of the three, Doughboy is the one who has fallen into that "predetermined" life of crime and violence, he in a gang and having just been released from a stint in prison. Regardless of what the three view as their respective futures, those futures may be affected by the environment in which they live where looking at the wrong person in the wrong way could result in a death sentence.