They start out as members of a street gang in East Los Angeles, and as dramatic incidents occur, their lives and friendships are forever changed.

In 1972, after a violent confrontation with his abusive father, Miklo Velka, a teenager of half-Mexican descent, leaves Las Vegas for East Los Angeles.

The cousins' paths diverge: Miklo is imprisoned in San Quentin for murder, Paco volunteers for military service in the Marine Corps in lieu of prison, and Cruz continues his passion for art.

Miklo notices that cocaine use is now rampant, driven by competing supplies from the BGA and La Onda council member Carlos.

Montana, against La Onda being in the drug trade, warns that the Aryans want to start a war between the Black and Chicano inmates.

[5] However, the original screenplay titled "Bound by Honor" was written by Chicano Pinto Poet Jimmy Santiago Baca.

Other actors considered for roles in the film included Andy García, Lou Diamond Phillips, and Sean Penn.

[10][11][12] The three prison gangs in the film are fictional creations of screenwriter Jimmy Santiago Baca and director Taylor Hackford.

Or one might become a homeless man, sleeping on a bed of newspapers and broken dreams, bathed all night long by flashing neon lights that herald attractions that are forever just out of reach.

Many members of the staff were given small lines in the film, with the warden giving an extended cameo in a part that is somewhat integral to the plot.

Hollywood Pictures insisted on the name change as the studio felt that the original title might incite violence in East Los Angeles.

In addition, executives at Hollywood Pictures, a division of The Walt Disney Studios, were concerned about the potential effect the 1993 film could have on Los Angeles following the 1992 LA Riots, especially after the attribution that was given to Boyz n the Hood as a partial cause of or inspiration for the civil unrest.

Director Taylor Hackford has stated that he was very unhappy with this decision, as the film's message was the exact opposite of the one that the studio feared could be transmitted.

However, at a screening in Las Vegas, Nevada, theater managers had called in the police to break up a fistfight between two couples, twenty minutes before the film was to start.

[15] The film was released nationally on thirty screens on April 30, 1993, but delayed in the Los Angeles markets until May 21, 1993, when the Rodney King civil rights trial verdict was to be handed down.

The city feared a repeat of the 1992 riots following the acquittal of four Los Angeles Police Department officers charged with beating King.

It is a feast of sight and sound--poetry, music, dance and emotion--and possibly one of the most powerful and important films of the decade".

[23] The TV Guide review noted the "similarity to Edward James Olmos' American Me, in which a tormented drug dealer travels the same route through prison society as Miklo.

"[24] Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum for the Chicago Reader wrote that this "ugly three-hour snoozefest is apparently supposed to do for East Los Angeles Chicanos what the Godfather movies did for New York mafiosi..."[25] Roger Ebert wrote "The East Los Angeles milieu and some of the characters seem familiar, because some of the same ground was covered by American Me...

[26] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave Bound By Honor a B−, falling on the high end of the film spectrum.

There's an exploitative thrill built into the genre..."[27] Gleiberman was more interested in the second half of the film once Miklo was in jail running La Onda.