Alongside Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, this was the most astonishing and hard-hitting directorial debut of the 1990s. John Singleton was a mere 23 years old when he wrote and directed this powerhouse picture about growing up black in inner-city America. Presenting a rougher and readier view than Spike Lee on the same subject, Singleton largely avoids sermonising in this brutally candid portrait of the realities of LA street life. Cuba Gooding Jr, Morris Chestnut and Ice Cube give impressive performances as the friends for whom the future looks uncertain (if not downright unlikely), while Larry (now Laurence) Fishburne is outstanding as Gooding Jr's disciplinarian father. Credible roles for women are usually at a premium in African-American cinema, but the boys' mothers are beautifully observed and sensitively played by Angela Bassett and Tyra Ferrell. Singleton deservedly received Oscar nominations for both his direction and screenplay.

In the middle of the Los Angeles ghetto, drugs, robberies and shootings dominate everyday life. During these times, Furious tries to raise his son Tre to be a decent person. Tre's friends, on the other hand, have little regard for the law and drag the entire neighborhood into a street war...