In South Central Los Angeles, California, Tre Styles lives with his divorced mother Reva Styles (Angela Bassett). When Tre is suspended for three days at school, Reva decides to send him to live in Crenshaw with his father, the businessman Furious Styles (Laurence Fishburne), "to become a man". Tre befriends his neighbors, the half-brothers Doughboy and Ricky Baker, and soon they become best friends. Seven years later, Tre (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) is an educated teenager preparing to join the university; Ricky (Morris Chestnut) is an athlete, expecting to join the university with a scholarship, since he is a great football player; and Doughboy (Ice Cube) is a small time criminal that has been arrested several times. But they live in a dangerous neighborhood where dreams are shattered by bullets.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil