So...
I decided to start a whole new blog for this review and other reviews in the near future. I don't feel connected to the old one anymore. I can start with a clean slate.
STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON
Let me get the obvious out of the way:
1. It's directed well-- F. Gary Gray, who did
Friday, presents an entertaining and funny narrative. There's a lot of in-jokes, mostly for those who grew up in poor neighborhoods. Apparently his director's cut adds an extra hour, so when this bad boy hits DVD/Blu Ray there will be more to post, for sure.
2. It's cast well. I gotta admit, I was skeptical when I saw the posters and the trailers. I didn't think the actors looked or sounded much like their roles. I couldn't even tell who was who sometimes in the ads. But as soon as the movie gets rolling, you begin to feel the presence of these actors. Corey Hawkins in particular brings the essence of Dr. Dre to life, but he also reminds me of a young Dorian Harewood or even Tyler The Creator. Ice Cube's son is basically a clone of his father. The guy playing Eazy E lacks the charisma necessary but he still does a great job of capturing the rapper's appeal. What really impressed me was the guys playing Ren and Yella. I was glad to see that they took some time to find actors who had the characters down, even the marginal ones.
3. It looks great on the big screen and sounds great in the theater. The soundtrack is nothing short of amazing. I've been bumping some N.W.A in the past year, anticipating this movie and how it would get the music across. Good sound design, mixing studio recordings with takes done by the actors. You can tell which is which but that's not the point. If you're a fan of the music you'll appreciate what has been done to tell the story properly.
As a technical achievement, it's competent: does the job, hits the marks. But as entertainment, it's something more... mostly because this is the first music biopic that I've seen where the subject of the movie is a group I practically grew up with, listening to when they first came out and watching the legacy unfold in real time. Other biopics and/or rock docs come with expectations of a different order: I didn't experience, say, The Beatles the same way my mother did. She had the first album on Vee Jay on vinyl and had her name next to "John Loves_____" on the back sleeve.
When I first started listening to The Beatles they had long disbanded, but N.W.A was fresh and new. I followed along as they became prominent, on to their breaking up, solo careers, diss tracks, and the inevitable demise of founder and key member Eazy-E. By the time Eazy passed away from AIDS I was in my own rap group, trying to make my dreams a reality like the guys in N.W.A did.
This is a movie that I have directed in my own mind at least a thousand times, with my own cast and screenplay. There are moments I would've chosen to explore deeper, and others I would have omitted entirely, songs I would have emphasized more, and scenes I would have expanded in my own geeky fan way. This review is not about that imaginary movie that exists only in my own psyche. This is about what I saw in the theater and how it felt as a 41 year-old man living in Indianapolis to think once again about Los Angeles and growing up there and how simple it all seemed once upon a time when rap was in its Golden Age and I was on the cusp of puberty and the hardest thing out at the time was Public Enemy and how could there ever be a group more radical than Chuck D and Flavor Flav...
Straight Outta Compton chooses its biopic tropes wisely: the template here is along the lines of
The Doors and
La Bamba, where the rise of an unknown group or individual is charted meteorically and the emphasis is on a strong bond within the film that separates and gets lost; on the way back to reconciliation, tragedy strikes and history is never the same. This is better than doing the standard straightforward rise-and-fall routine, and is a better fit than some experimental stunt-casting type of movie that the recent Brian Wilson flick seemed to pull off without a hitch. To make a movie about gangsta rappers, one needs to feel like they were a gang. Maybe they weren't real gangbangers, but Gray is smart to frame the relationships in that milieu, with an us-against-the-world romanticism that makes scenes such as those decrying police brutality seem more authentic. After a while, you become a part of that gang as well, which is appropriate because listening to N.W.A often felt like being the shy new member of a rowdy set, living vicariously through their experiences. It was exciting; you felt like you'd been given an honorary pass, participating in a different sort of ride along.
Of course, despite the short duration of the group itself, there is so much to pack into two hours that things gets left out. That's nothing new, and I won't dwell on that aspect. However, there is a part of me that thinks that this would've been a great Netflix streaming series. I could binge on the exploits of pre-fame Dr. Dre and Eazy for at least three or four episodes alone. But even if given the luxury of spreading out the drama evenly, I can understand how the story of N.W.A needs to be told on the big screen in stereo: N.W.A was a larger-than-life group, and the story must be told with broad strokes. TV would only reduce and compress something that already has to be contained. Luckily, the finer points don't get lost in the sweeping statements of celluloid. You feel the dinginess of the ghetto project life in the early scenes, the joy of creating art in the behind-the-scenes studio recreations, the decadence of the post-fame excess that drove the wedge between the principals.
The movie grabs you from the very start then goes into the characters and the origins of the group itself. Then, all of a sudden, Paul Giamatti (looking like Leslie Nielsen if he'd really let himself go) shows up, and the movie turns into something delightfully different. As Jerry Heller, I almost feel like Giamatti's just phoning it in, but then you get the feeling that anyone who can make Jerry Heller seem sympathetic has got to get an Oscar nomination in the very least. Maybe he's such a good actor that you have a hard time believing he's acting; he makes it look so effortless. Yes, Heller is a role someone like Paul Giamatti was born to play, one that he can do in his sleep... and yet, he still does such a good job that it makes the relative unknowns and newcomers look really, really good. Because of his intelligent performance as a man who fits a softer definition of the word 'ruthless', the movie plays fair with Heller's role in the legacy. Yes, he did exploit the rappers, but he also ponied up a quarter mil to co-invest in a drug dealer's record label at a time when Jheri curls were sort of a joke and L.A. was known for Electro more than hip-hop.
Which brings up a minor quibble: Arabian Prince isn't even mentioned once (or maybe he was and I didn't hear it; the audience I saw this movie with was quite talkative) and other than the obligatory digs at Dre's first group, the World Class Wreckin' Crew, nothing is really said about music in L.A. at the time, at least nothing on the surface-- a quick glimpse at Cube's bused-into-the-Valley school days acknowledges that, in the white schools, the '80s sounded a lot less intense than in the 'hood of South Central. And the funny bit with HBO, the NY based group that passed on N.W.A's first hit, "Boyz N The Hood", hints at how lame the West Coast looked to East Coast MCs in that time period.
But that's when it hits you: you realize that this group
really did change the world of popular music. Back in the day, if I'd been asked which rap group will go on to have a movie made about them, I would've said Public Enemy. They should've been the ones, because they were serious and political and conscious... but I'm glad it was N.W.A because I took a secret pleasure in hearing their music. You couldn't let your parents hear it. You could really only play it for people who liked rap, and yet I converted many white kids on my bus route over to gangsta rap simply because N.W.A cursed and had some funny rhymes. To a 12 year-old, that shit is
funny. As a result, I still think it's funny as an adult. In fact, my biggest regret about the movie is that I didn't find out who did the voice of the cop at the end of "F--- Tha Police", the one who says, "Fuck you, you black motherfuckerrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..." (My guess is that it's Cube, and if it was then it's even funnier) The music took me back, and seeing actors try to pretend that we are all there at a pivotal point in popular culture made me smile and I was happy with that.
Since Cube and Dre were the main producers, they come off the best. Ice Cube practically dominates the movie, as he did back when the group was still around. However, the character that I ended up liking the best was DJ Yella. I know almost nothing about the man, as big as a fan that I am of N.W.A. His character is the comic relief but it was nice to give Yella an actual identity. MC Ren doesn't get fleshed out as much but then again Ren is a bit of a mystery. Still, this is where a streaming series treatment would've been a good idea: one or two episodes dedicated to characters like The D.O.C or Suge Knight or Sir Jinx. They become peripheral figures in the movie but a series would've allowed that space to open up.
One last thing: the actors they picked to play Snoop and Tupac were great. Their screen time was nothing grand but they gave me moments of surprise and promise, almost wishing they would come in and take over the narrative. Maybe now that this movie has been made (and I know it will do handsome box office) perhaps something akin to the Marvel movie franchise will unfold. I'm sure we'll see lots of good and bad movies about rappers who may or may not deserve the effort being made (I'm betting 2 Live Crew will be the next group to receive this treatment) and that will be fine by me because I love the music and (as long as they are made with affection and care) I will probably go and out watch those movies in the theater, and NOT wait for them to come out on DVD or on my Roku. I didn't go and see
Notorious when it came out, but I am waiting for the day when someone announces a RUN-DMC television miniseries, or "The KRS-ONE Story" on Crackle.
Maybe they'll even make that Public Enemy movie. Flavor Flav will play himself, and he'll look exactly the same as he did in 1986 because black don't crack.
