Sometimes a film is so influential that if you come to it late, its imitators dilute its impact – but not so here.
John Singleton’s parable of three childhood friends finding their way in South Central LA has the feel of lived experience, rather than genre box-ticking; and, as his commentary makes clear, it pretty much was for the then-23-year-old.
If some of the point making is a tad on the nose, it’s compensated for by Laurence Fishburne’s turn as one of the great dads in cinema.
