The film missed a wonderful opportunity to begin an analysis about the root causes of the violence cycle in which most inner city youth are caught. Instead, it focused on symptoms, entrenched structural response to those symptoms, and vague, tangential causation, allowing the problems addressed in the film to worsen to where we are today, which is close to the complete socio economic destruction of an entire cultural subset of our country.Today the film is just as brilliant, fresh, important, and devastating as it was 28 years ago.
Great to have FrankIvy back.
Your point is taken however more applicable if he created a 5 part docu-series around the root causes. This was a cultural American movie released in the Middle of the crack epidemic that impacted communities significantly across generations all over the nation. At the end of the day he made a movie representative of life in these communities impacted thus humanizing these communities. It's an American classic but also a reminder of the systematic policies that contributed to the nationwide crack epidemic starting with Iran Contra and the CIA creating and funneling this stuff in these communities through existing gang networks to fund an illegal war.The film missed a wonderful opportunity to begin an analysis about the root causes of the violence cycle in which most inner city youth are caught. Instead, it focused on symptoms, entrenched structural response to those symptoms, and vague, tangential causation, allowing the problems addressed in the film to worsen to where we are today, which is close to the complete socio economic destruction of an entire cultural subset of our country.