Singleton sometimes displays his youthful inexperience in melodramatic emphasis and rhetorical flourishes, but he has created a deeply troubling film about responsibility.
Like a jazz ensemble, Singleton and his actors slowly involve us in an almost sensual melange of moods, images and situations that take us inside the ghetto in a way mainstream films almost never do.
Boyz N the Hood is a passionate drama shot with fluency and style, a study of what amounts to life during wartime, with people grimly used to gunfire and helicopters thudding overhead.
The violence in Boyz N the Hood is neither gratuitous nor melodramatic; its aftermath is shattering. Singleton's powerhouse movie has the impact of a stun gun.
It's always risky to proclaim a new force in film based upon just one film, but Boyz N the Hood is good enough to suggest that John Singleton is going to be a major player for a long time.
