There are two elements of the film that shine the brightest. The use of slow cross-fades is particularly effective, framing the story as dream of progress that gradually descends into a bloody nightmare of dashed hope and random carnage. He subtly states his presence as a silent, if very angry observer. Singleton seldom resorts to empty camera trickery. And this isn’t just well-researched mannerisms and speech inflections, but its clever digressions and the unhysterical way in which it’s edited. But where the film excels is in the fine detail. Its basic structure cleaves to a fairly conventional melodramatic template, and the plot is rife with blatant signposts as to ensuing mayhem. The victims are the uncared for newborns crawling into the traffic, the proud mothers forced to make premature funeral arrangements for their fallen sons, the fathers teaching truth to power in an attempt to educate the gang-bangers into seeing the real enemy, or the kids playing catch and happening across a bullet-riddled corpse. It’s people acting on a primordial instinct, unable to comprehend how their actions might affect other, innocent people. Violence is presented as an unstoppable inevitability, hard-wired into its chest-bumping, teeth-kissing exponents.

Boyz n the hood plot