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| Directed by F. Gary Gray Written by Jonathan Herman, Andrea Berloff, S. Leigh Savidge, and Alan Wenkus |
Alo Party Peoples.
As a general rule, the best life's story movies tend to be made after the life in question has come to an end, because the film makers are free to make a statement about that life without worrying that the person who lived it will take offense at what they have to say. And since most of N.W.A are still alive as of this writing, there's a limit to how good Straight Outta Compton can reasonably be expected to be.
It's not like you couldn't make a great film about N.W.A, there is absolutely something to be made out of their struggle to be taken seriously as artists, or the idea that they started to lose their revolutionary power after becoming famous, or that hip-hop is the only part of 90's music that would have any impact once the decade ended, or that "F*** Tha Police" is sadly just as relevant and resonant today as it was in 1988. There are so many approaches you could take that of course you could make a great film about N.W.A, but Straight Outta Compton is not that movie.
As a general rule, the best life's story movies tend to be made after the life in question has come to an end, because the film makers are free to make a statement about that life without worrying that the person who lived it will take offense at what they have to say. And since most of N.W.A are still alive as of this writing, there's a limit to how good Straight Outta Compton can reasonably be expected to be.
It's not like you couldn't make a great film about N.W.A, there is absolutely something to be made out of their struggle to be taken seriously as artists, or the idea that they started to lose their revolutionary power after becoming famous, or that hip-hop is the only part of 90's music that would have any impact once the decade ended, or that "F*** Tha Police" is sadly just as relevant and resonant today as it was in 1988. There are so many approaches you could take that of course you could make a great film about N.W.A, but Straight Outta Compton is not that movie.
The problem is not that there is nothing to say about N.W.A, the problem is that Straight Outta Compton has nothing to say about them, and not because the film-makers were afraid to say anything about N.W.A, but because two of its members were directly involved in its production. Rap, and especially the gangsta' rap that N.W.A. pioneered, is about image, and Straight Outta Compton only exists so that Dr. Dre and Ice Cube can sand the rough edges off of that image for posterity.
It's a real shame, because there is a lot of good in Straight Outta Compton. The first hour of the film where Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and Easy-E get the idea to reject the electronic dance jams that dominated 80s hip hop and instead make what they call "reality rap" that reflects the world around them, one where brutal gang violence and an equally brutal police force are omnipresent, recording the album that gives the film it's title, and quickly rising to the national forefront as the face of a dangerous new genre of music, is intense, powerful, and simply spectacular. F. Gary Gray captures the passionate adolescent rage that fueled N.W.A. so well that even if you deplore everything they stand for, you simply can't help but be swept up in it.
Easily the film's best scene is when N.W.A. performs a live show in Detroit, and are lectured by the local police beforehand, who inform them that they will not tolerate any profane language, and certainly will not tolerate playing "F*** Tha Police" (this comes shortly after they received a letter from the F.B.I advising them to not perform it, something so insane that I'm sure you're assuming that it was made up for the movie, it wasn't) So they of course wait until the end of the show just to make a point, and immediately officers hiding in the audience start moving towards the stage, badges held high, to put down this dissent, the group makes a break for the parking lot, where a silent line of officers is waiting to arrest them. After they are apprehended, the kids in the audience start pooling up on the roof and throwing burning trash, one of them shouting "F*** the police!" as N.W.A is driven away to jail.
It's a real shame, because there is a lot of good in Straight Outta Compton. The first hour of the film where Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and Easy-E get the idea to reject the electronic dance jams that dominated 80s hip hop and instead make what they call "reality rap" that reflects the world around them, one where brutal gang violence and an equally brutal police force are omnipresent, recording the album that gives the film it's title, and quickly rising to the national forefront as the face of a dangerous new genre of music, is intense, powerful, and simply spectacular. F. Gary Gray captures the passionate adolescent rage that fueled N.W.A. so well that even if you deplore everything they stand for, you simply can't help but be swept up in it.
Easily the film's best scene is when N.W.A. performs a live show in Detroit, and are lectured by the local police beforehand, who inform them that they will not tolerate any profane language, and certainly will not tolerate playing "F*** Tha Police" (this comes shortly after they received a letter from the F.B.I advising them to not perform it, something so insane that I'm sure you're assuming that it was made up for the movie, it wasn't) So they of course wait until the end of the show just to make a point, and immediately officers hiding in the audience start moving towards the stage, badges held high, to put down this dissent, the group makes a break for the parking lot, where a silent line of officers is waiting to arrest them. After they are apprehended, the kids in the audience start pooling up on the roof and throwing burning trash, one of them shouting "F*** the police!" as N.W.A is driven away to jail.
This scene captures what defines gangsta' rap; the glorification of that which is decidedly inglorious. It's a scene where our heroes are at once standing up to a corrupt government regime that simply will not tolerate dissent... but they're also sort-of inciting a riot and getting arrested in the process. If the rest of the movie was able to keep up that dynamic, if it could continue emphasizing that theme of the impossible to surpress power of ideas, or even if it ended on that scene, then Straight Outta Compton would be pretty spectacular, maybe even this year's Selma.
Unfortunately, once that scene ends, and once Ice Cube leaves N.W.A over contract disputes, Straight Outta Compton turns straight into Oscar bait as it drifts into a loose collection of scenes in chronological order that have no connective tissue between them, as befits most bog-standard biopics aiming for Oscars. Much like N.W.A. itself, the back-half of Straight Outta Compton gets lost in itself and loses sight of what made it work in the first place. The Rodney King trials are a constant background presence on TV news throughout this part of the movie, and for a while I thought the fact that we only see them through TV news was supposed to represent N.W.A. having grown distant from their roots... until they drive right through the LA riots and that pretty clever visual conceit falls apart.
I wanted to like Straight Outta Compton a lot more than I did. That a movie about N.W.A. can exist as a bog-standard biopic released to a mass audience during Oscar season is in and of itself amazing, it's equality in action, it's just a shame that bog-standard biopics are the norm for musicians.
Have a nice day.
Greg.B
FINAL RATING: 3/5
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