Boyz n the Hood (1991) on Netflix
Tre Styles leaves his mother's home for his father's house in South Central Los Angeles. There he grows up beside Doughboy and Ricky, while gang culture, drugs and rivalries close in.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.8/10170,657 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes96%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1984, ten-year-old Tre Styles gets into an altercation at school, and his mother decides he should grow up in the Crenshaw neighborhood with his father, Furious Styles, whose household runs on rules and chores. Seven years later, Tre is a high school senior. Ricky, Doughboy's half-brother, is a star running back at the same school, chasing a football scholarship to USC, and shares the family house with his girlfriend Shanice and their young son, while Doughboy has just left prison and deals drugs. Tre wants to go to college with his girlfriend, Brandi, but the gang culture around him keeps pressing in.
Cast
- Hudhail Al-Amiras S.A.T. Man
- Lloyd Avery IIas Knucklehead #2
Show all 20 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Boyz n the Hood (1991)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- For the film, Singleton became the youngest person and the first African American ever nominated for the Best Director Oscar; in the decades since, only a handful of Black directors, including Steve McQueen, Barry Jenkins and Jordan Peele, have received the same nomination.
- The role of Doughboy was written specifically for rapper Ice Cube, whom Singleton had met while interning at The Arsenio Hall Show; the studio backing the film reportedly did not realize Ice Cube was a member of the rap group N.W.A.
- John Singleton originally wrote the story as an answer to a film-school application question asking for three film ideas; the idea he titled Summer of 84 later grew into Boyz n the Hood.
- Singleton was so protective of his script that he insisted on directing the project himself, later explaining at a retrospective screening of the film: “I wasn't going to have somebody from Idaho or Encino direct this movie.”
- Filming began on October 1, 1990 in South Central Los Angeles, with several gang members serving as consultants on wardrobe, vocal emphasis and dialogue changes to ensure the film felt authentic.
- Gooding and Chestnut got their parts almost by chance: Singleton has said they were cast because they were the first ones who showed up to auditions, while he met Fishburne on the set of Pee-wee's Playhouse, where he worked as a production assistant and security guard.
- In late 2025 a TikTok meme called Saxophones Getting Louder began trending; it uses a saxophone riff performed by Kirk Whalum from Boyz n the Hood and is supposed to indicate that something is about to go wrong.
