Robert Townsend's "In the Hive" tells the story of a young man pulled from his father's gang and forced into a reform school. We may expect that we are about to see a tardy inspirational film from 1990s South Central Los Angeles, in which a young man undergoes a personal transformation, with the usual melodramatic difficulties, leading to triumph in the third act. But this is about a real school in North Carolina and the film does not indulge sentimentality. His name is Xtra (played by rapper Jonathan 'Lil J' McDaniel, of the Disney Channel show That's So Raven) and beneath the longing eyes and rugged chin, he stubbornly adheres to his own philosophy. Nobody can tell him how to live, and revenge is as necessary as the air. His father (Roger Guenveur Smith) tries control him from prison. His mother (Vivca A. Fox) loses her exhausting job on a nursing home night-shift, and now derives income from the oldest profession. Xtra is left to raise his younger siblings, and his newborn son.