Poetic Justice

Director: John Singleton

1993 / 109min / DCP

Singleton’s follow-up to his breakthrough Boyz N the Hood departs from that film’s closed world of bitter machismo, offering a road trip romance that gives a sweet (but never candy-coated) depiction of the gradual trust and tenderness that grows between two badly wounded people—Justice (Janet Jackson), a poet who’s recently lost a lover; and Lucky (Tupac Shakur), an aspiring rapper working for the postal service—through the course of an out-of-necessity road trip from Los Angeles to Oakland. Jackson and Shakur’s chemistry is lightning in a bottle.