Plot
On a cold winter Saturday in Chicago in year 2002, Calvin Palmer, Jr. (Ice Cube) decides he has had enough of trying to keep open the barbershop his father handed down to him. He cannot borrow enough money to keep the place open, it is not bringing in enough revenue, and he is more interested in coming up with get-rich-quick schemes to bring in easy money. Without telling his employees or the customers, Calvin sells his barbershop to a greedy loan shark named Lester Wallace (Keith David), who lies about keeping the place the same and suddenly makes plans to turn the place into a strip club.
Prior to this, two wannabe thugs, JD (Anthony Anderson) and his best friend Billy (Lahmard Tate), steal an ATM from a convenience store and they spend all day trying to pry it open. After spending a day at work and realizing just how vital the barbershop is to the surrounding community, Calvin rethinks his decision and tries to get his shop back, only to find out Wallace wants double the $20,000 he paid Calvin to give the shop back, and before 7 P.M. Now Calvin has only a scant few hours to try to raise enough money to save the shop. After he admits to the employees that he sold the barber shop and that it would be closing at the end of the day, Chicago police come in and arrests one of the barbers named Ricky (Michael Ealy). Ricky was arrested after being accused of driving his pickup truck into a nearby market to steal the ATM, but it is revealed that the ATM thief, JD, is Ricky's cousin and he was the one who committed the crime after borrowing Ricky's truck. That was Ricky's third strike, and he could be sentenced to life in prison. Calvin uses the $20,000 from Lester to bail Ricky out of jail. Once Calvin picks Ricky up from the jail, Ricky is angry at his cousin for betraying him and wants to kill him!
Calvin tries to calm him down, but Ricky does not show any sign of calming down. Calvin gives Ricky a gun he found that fell out of Ricky's locker at the shop, and is disappointed that Ricky is going to end up right back in jail. Ricky tells Calvin to pull the car over, and he does. Ricky gets out and decides to throw the gun off the bridge they are on and into the water before getting back into the car, proving that he does not want to get in any more trouble with the law. Then they both go to see Lester. Lester, as well as JD and Billy (who were still trying to pry it open) are confronted by Calvin and Ricky. Calvin and Ricky demands Lester to give Calvin his barbershop back. Lester is angered and orders his bodyguard Monk to pull out his gun. The police arrive just in time to save Calvin and Ricky. JD and Billy are arrested. Calvin and Ricky see the ATM, and get a $50,000 reward for returning it to police. They get the money, and the barbershop reopens with even better business than before. In the meantime, Calvin's wife, Jennifer (Jazsmin Lewis), has given birth to a baby boy.
Read more about this topic: Barbershop (film)
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