[Movie Review] Straight Outta Compton (2015)

Posted on August 14, 2015 by thegrandshuckett in Movie Reviews // 0 Comments

Director: F. Gary Gray

Writers: Jonathan Herman, Andrea Berloff

Runtime: 147 min

Main Cast:

O'Shea Jackson Jr. as Ice Cube
Corey Hawkins as Dr. Dre
Jason Mitchell as Eazy-E
Neil Brown Jr. as Dj Yella
Aldis Hodge as MC Ren

Review by: Faith and Marie

We were so excited to see this movie. Waiting and waiting for the longest time can make anyone anxious and this was definitely a movie well worth seeing.

With biopics of living musicians, there is always a conflict of interest. You most certainly need to have the creators on board if you want to feature the songs that made them noteworthy. The first half of Gary Gary’s two and a half hour film is about the birth of west coast gangsta rap, which as expected was bursting with energy and inspiration. The second half of the film is immobilized by bloat and sanctification. There are some truly dope cuts up in here, but there’s plenty of filler too.

Gary Gary opens this film up in the late 1980s, in the economically disadvantaged Los Angeles neighborhood that will soon become identical with this new form of “reality raps”. Drugs are rampant, and one such low-level runner is young Eric “Eazy-E” Wright (Jason Mitchell). He is friends with Andre “Dr Dre” Young (Corey Hawkins), a skilled DJ far more concerned with spinning records than looking after his newborn child. Also in the mix is a wise-beyond-his-years teen poet O’Shea “Ice Cube” Jackson (played by producer Ice Cube’s son O’Shea Jackson Jr.). After a series of everyday indignities such as getting pushed around by police and having to work dead end jobs, they form the collective NWA (Niggaz With Attitudes). Eazy-E puts up the initial money, Ice Cube writes the lyrics and Dr Dre lays down the tracks. There are additional members of the group hanging around, but it’s clear that Eazy-E is the heart, Ice Cube is the head and Dr Dre is the central nervous system. When the three work together, all they form is magic.

For a good amount of time they are riding high and enjoying the entertainment industry. Eazy-E cuts their first independent record, Boyz n the Hood, which gets the attention of semi-angelic, semi-sleazebag producer Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti). Heller is an excellent character, meaning that he shows to genuinely respect the group and their talents, which gave him the push to getting them their initial exposure. He is also repulsed by the ubiquitous police harassment his artists face, and uses his white privilege to defuse a tense situation. It’s a harrowing sequence, one of many, featuring thuggish cops that resonate with the recent tensions between black citizens and the police in the US (or, should I say more accurately, with a situation that has always been prevalent in America).

This nerve racking scene is what inspires these artists of NWA to record their masterpiece, Fuck Tha Police, a real raw, and for its time, shocking repudiation from the African American community put into an infectious beat. Once the song is cut, the movie jumps ahead and the group is on everyone’s mind and lips, and their nationwide tour is a triumph of rebellion and debauchery. This stretch of the film soars. It’s fast, funny and taps into what made this group so revolutionary. It’s so elated that it makes up for the slog that the picture will ultimately become.

Straight Outta Compton is more ambiguous when it comes to dealing with gangsta rap’s problematic dislike of lyrics. The chosen raps are light on sexual propaganda while the party scenes are wall to wall with the nude groupies. Female characters are mostly absent from the film, at least from the first half. Dre’s baby mama is only seen once leaving town with his daughter. His mother is portrayed as a saint looking after his best interests. A few more women characters show up as Ice Cube and Dr Dre begin their slide toward more mainstream entertainment in the film’s second half. But before Ice Cube can star in a family fare or Dre can create Beats headphones, they need to change the world.

Straight Outta Compton’s climax comes in Detroit when, after a strict warning, they perform Fuck Tha Police and near a riot breaks out. They all end up in jail, followed by a profound press conference. But it’s all downhill for the group after this. Ice Cube is the first to leave NWA, unhappy with the contract being offered by Heller. The remaining members record a diss track on their next album, and Cube fires back with No Vaseline, one of the most vicious rebukes in the history of hip-hop. He destroys his previous colleagues with a barrage of homophobic slurs, and makes an anti-Semitic comment about Heller. NWA never really recovers, and soon Dr Dre teams up with the large menacing former bodyguard Suge Knight whose megalomaniacal style (which involves keeping intimidating dogs) isn’t just shady but dangerous. Only if the original group could bury the drama and form back together, especially with the urban community in turmoil after the Rodney King trial. Just when it looks like the reunion will happen, Eazy-E dies from AIDS.

What I Liked:

There were many scenes in this movie worth liking, however we would have to say that our favorite scene was when the members of NWA were having a party in their hotel room and Dr Dre got a knock on his door by a guy asking if his girlfriend Felisha was in the room with them. Dr Dre slams his door in the guy’s face, after seeing that he was carrying a pistol. He goes to the adjoining room and lets the other members know what is going on and to find this girl Felisha. They find the girl in the bathroom with Eazy-E and he confronts the guy with semi-automatic weapons and an attitude. When the members of NWA go back into their hotel room, Ice Cube pushes Felisha, by her head, out of the doorway into the hall, as he says “Bye Felisha”. This was so funny to us because of the character Felisha in Ice Cube’s movie Friday. So putting one and one together, it all made sense.

What I Didn’t Like:

This movie was produced by the majority of the real artists themselves so the movie was extremely on point with the history of the group NWA. There was not much to dislike. The only thing that would have been more realistic was if the actors had been more sad and remorseful during some of the sad parts in the movie. It seemed for some actors it may have been hard to bring out the tears when needed.

Summary

To summarize; Straight Outta Compton shows the struggle of a nation and how five young men translated their experiences growing up into brutally honest music that rebelled against abusive authority, that gave an explosive voice to a silenced generation. Following the rise and fall of N.W.A., Straight Outta Compton tells the astonishing story of how these young men revolutionized music and pop culture forever the moment they told the world the truth about life in the hood and ignited a cultural war. The group that defined a generation has set down a great movie for all time.

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