BOYZ N THE HOOD (1991) *** (out of four) 2-DISC ANNIVERSARY EDITION: Image B Sound B+ Extras A

Buy at Amazon USA Buy at Amazon Canada It was written after Boyz N the Hood came out that Spike Lee is an artist and John Singleton is a craftsman, a dubious assessment considering that Singleton had yet to amass a body of work. Nevertheless, Singleton seems to have taken the appraisal to heart, for while the camera in Boyz is mostly unobtrusive (I'd call the picture's look "TV movie-esque" if I knew that it wouldn't be taken pejoratively), flamboyant visuals have progressively consumed his attention to the point where we can't even call 2 Fast 2 Furious a victory of style over substance--there is no substance to defeat. Boyz N the Hood, if anything, suffers from an excess of marrow: the film gets lumpy with data on matters of grave import, declining all too often to let an image speak for itself. I think if you really want to draw a line between Spike and John (and why do you? Because they're both black?), it's that Lee evinces a more worldly film education in cribbing from sources as varied as George Stevens and the French New Wave, while Singleton--especially in Boyz--is far less esoteric, his influences ranging a short distance from Martin Scorsese to George Lucas. That movie-bratism makes Boyz N the Hood an entertaining sermon to contemplate in high school, when one's socio-economic and cinematic concerns are proportionately increasing, but it appears a trifle hackneyed to my adult eyes. For all the ink that was spilled once upon a time comparing Singleton to Orson Welles, particularly when the former became the youngest person since the latter to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Director, Boyz N the Hood is the work of a fanboy; Welles' Citizen Kane is the work of a savant. Singleton's age betrayed him here and there. In addition to forced-feeling exposition, the picture is plagued by the kind of cheap ironies of which we're fond in our formative years. (When it's revealed after he dies that a character who needed 700 on his SATs to get into college received a score of, for all intents and purposes, 701, it's hard not to snicker.) Of course, the Singleton of Boyz N the Hood is also a youth-incited political firebrand, and the film has lost none of its power to affect us with the sight of a South Central neighbourhood ravaged by national inattention and corrupted by male pride. The cast, including Cuba Gooding, Jr. as promising high-school senior Tre, Laurence Fishburne as Tre's father, Furious Styles (still my favourite movie name), and Ice Cube as Tre's troubled friend Doughboy, brings Singleton's many individual civics lessons to compelling life (Fishburne debuts here the stentorian voice that will authenticate his speeches in the Matrix trilogy). It's thanks to its graceful performances, in fact, that Boyz N the Hood above all else endures as something lovely. Columbia Tri-Star's new "2-Disc Anniversary Edition" DVD of Boyz N the Hood was scheduled for release in tandem with 2001's quasi-sequel Baby Boy but fell mysteriously off pre-order lists only to finally materialize in stores a couple of weeks back. The first platter contains 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and full-frame versions of the 112-minute feature, and that information overload seems to cost the transfer(s) a loss of detail, particularly in dark fields of the image. Strangely, Boyz is brighter and more colourful when it airs on TBS--and sounds about the same: the Dolby Surround audio squelches bass and offers music at a quieter volume than dialogue or effects. (The impact with which Stanley Clarke's score landed in theatres and on Criterion's LaserDisc is all but absent.) Rounding out Disc One is an engaging film-length yak-track from Singleton that's on a par with the one he recorded for the Criterion LD; therein, the director reflects on the experience of shooting Boyz "eight years ago," meaning this package is even more past due than we thought, though it thankfully hasn't grown stale in the interim. An outstanding documentary is the highlight of Disc Two's meagre supplementary offerings: Todd Williams' "Friendly Fire: Making of an Urban Legend" (43 mins.) gathers up most of the cast and crew (save Dedrick "V-Dub" Gobert's pacifier-lovin' Dooky, whom we learn in a dedication died in 1994) for a thorough, candid stroll down memory lane that starts with Singleton discussing the catalysts for his screenplay and ends with a blessedly unremorseful analysis of the violence that erupted in LA theatres on opening weekend. Unfortunately, Gooding, Jr. mocks the spate of bad scripts that arrived on his doorstep post-Boyz--as if he's exhibited any kind of eye for material since! Two short deleted scenes, one involving Tre discussing his future with mother Angela Bassett, the other pitting Doughboy and Furious against each other; videos for Compton's Most Wanted's "Growin' Up in the Hood" and Tevin Campbell's "Just Ask Me To"; several filmographies; and trailers for Boyz N the Hood, Poetic Justice, Baby Boy, Bad Boys II, Blue Streak, Money Train, and National Security complete the set.-BC Running Time 112 minutes; MPAA R; Aspect Ratio(s) 1.85:1, 16x9-enhanced/Standard 1.33:1; Languages English Dolby Surround, French Dolby Surround, Spanish Dolby Surround; CC Yes; Subtitles English, French, Spanish; DVD-9 + DVD-5; Region One; Columbia Tri-Star

Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker) is an ex-cop with a racing bug who puts his souped-up Skyline to the street race-circuit test before he's recruited by the FBI to go undercover, again, to break up the smuggling operation of kingpin Carter Verone (Cole Hauser). (Already undercover is agent Clemente (Eva Mendes), who is feared by her superiors to have turned--like O'Conner in the first film.) Meanwhile, a condition of O'Conner's involvement is that he be allowed to choose his partner; enter Roman (Tyrese), the requisite minority half of the buddy-movie equation. What's not as easy to explain is why Roman and O'Conner spend all their time strutting around like A Night at the Roxbury's Butabi brothers, joined at the shoulder and prancing around like prize hens.

The picture is patronizing to the only audience remotely interested in seeing it, banking on being a faithful adaptation of EASY RIDER magazine complete with a homoerotic fixation on male rivalry (including a Greco-Roman tussle between Walker and Tyrese) and a simultaneous hatred and fear of women that reduces them to asses to slap and aliens to evade. (Even O'Conner's car, with its random jets of steam, manages to goose a faceless, hot-pants'd race groupie.) The fetishistic leering at inappropriately dressed women and the same leering at the chrome surfaces and polished interiors of the cars remind of the Burt Reynolds hillbilly car operas of our better-forgotten past. (A mass "scramble" at 2 Fast 2 Furious' climactic chase sequence is something straight out of Smokey and the Bandit.) These are similarities that should raise eyebrows given Singleton's filmography to this point: either he's lost his mind or he's selling out. Fact is, he's doing both, but he's justifying it by being as mean-spirited and condescending as humanly possible.

None of which goes very far in explaining how it is that Singleton managed to produce a film this disjointed and incompetent. The racing scenes are impossible to follow, shot and edited with a simpleton's logic that reduces every scene to a series of cockpit shots lifted from "Battlestar Gallactica". Likewise, Paul Walker's performance is one for the ages, establishing himself as not only the worst actor in the United States, but possibly the worst actor the United States has ever produced. His complete lack of expression lends 2 Fast 2 Furious the only thing in it that could ever be mistaken for nuance. Loud and noxious, the picture is an example of what can happen when the lowest common denominator meets a director in sulky decline: the worst film so far this year.-Walter Chaw

Universal presents the flatly-lit but colourful 2 Fast 2 Furious on DVD in a near-irreproachable 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer (fullscreen sold separately). Overenhanced sharpness is the only impairment to the image, and it doesn't amount to a distraction; played loud, the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is likewise a technical success, full of dizzying split-surround usage from the word go and dipping to sternum-rattling bass on occasion--the chrome Universal logo that opens the film looks and sounds cool. I wish there were a DTS option (I wish a lot of improvements for 2 Fast 2 Furious), but c'est la vie. Singleton's commentary for the film is heartbreaking, especially on the heels of his intimate Boyz yakker, for it's clear that he's struggling to find a place on his resume for such a meaningless, impersonal work. (Elsewhere, maybe in the dry making-of "Inside 2 Fast 2 Furious" (10 mins.), Singleton disingenuously says he envied the original's concept because he grew up in the vicinity of a street-racing culture.)

The disc also features a fact-track of car info ("'Did You Know That?' Animated Anecdotes"), six worthless deleted scenes (each with video introductions by co-editor Bruce Cannon and a bloated, disengaged Singleton), a 3-minute reel of "outtakes" (Tyrese clowning around until it becomes nauseating), a 5-minute dissection of the boat jump courtesy stunt supervisor Al Desario ("Supercharged Stunts"), and a 3-minute featurette on "Tricking Out a Hot Import Car"--in which 2002's Playmate of the Year Dalene Kurtis provides window dressing--cap off the common selection of extras. (Apparently there are segments covering Ludacris and the 2 Fast 2 Furious videogame, too, but I couldn't locate them.) Meanwhile, pick from three separate menu interfaces: choosing Roman, Brian, or Suki's car entitles you to additional information on "actors" Tyrese, Paul Walker, and Devon Aoki, respectively, as well as the hot-rods their characters drive. Unearth the Cracker Jack prize, though, by choosing chapter one of the "scenes" menu, which leads you to a silent (save library techno cues) "Prelude" (6 mins.) starring Walker that bridges the story gap between the first and second films. Directed by Philip G. Atwell like one of those country-music videos with a narrative, it's a fascinating glimpse into a cinematic abyss that one naively assumed couldn't get any deeper.-Bill Chambers

SHAFT

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