Biopic follows N.W.A straight outta Compton as they take their case to the people
STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON (F. Gary Gray, 2015)
Opens Friday, August 14
www.straightouttacompton.com
F. Gary Gray’s Straight Outta Compton comes barreling out of the gates with all the rage and fury of the 1988 title track, which kicks off with Dr. Dre declaring, “You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge.” The energetic film follows the rise and fall, or creation and dissolution, of N.W.A, the seminal south L.A. hip-hop group that changed music forever. In the late 1980s, Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins), Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell), MC Ren (Aldis Hodge), and DJ Yella (Neil Brown Jr.) formed a rap group that sought to capture the sound and feel of what was happening on the streets of Compton, from drugs and gangs to racist cops and poverty. They were a smash hit, particularly their controversial song “Fuck Tha Police,” which set up confrontations with authorities as the band hit the road on a nationwide tour. But when Cube and Dre start questioning where all the money is going — Eazy-E and manager Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti) seem to be doing a lot better than the rest of them — everything they have built up threatens to unravel. And once Suge Knight (R. Marcus Taylor) enters the picture, the violence level increases, and things start getting even more out of control.
Life threatens to get outta control for N.W.A in STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON
With Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and Tomica Woods-Wright, Eazy-E’s widow, among the producers, Straight Outta Compton doesn’t pussyfoot around as the various characters make their cases for artistic and financial freedom while reinventing the music business. Juilliard graduate Hawkins (The Walking Dead) is outstanding as Dre, maintaining a calm demeanor even as all hell breaks loose around him, while Jackson Jr. has trouble hitting the high notes portraying his father, Cube, and Mitchell gives Eazy-E an unpredictable nuance. Taylor wreaks havoc as Knight, the extremely dangerous cofounder of Death Row Records, who makes sure he gets what he wants, while Giamatti has a steady disposition as a white man in a black man’s world. The music scenes are spectacular, especially a Detroit concert that turned into a showdown between the cops and N.W.A, and it’s cool to see Snoop Dogg (Keith Stanfield), Chuck D (Rogelio Douglas Jr.), and Tupac Shakur (Marcc Rose). The film wavers a bit when it tries to get overly sentimental or inject too many side stories; it’s best when it just forges ahead with the frenzy and furor that was N.W.A, taking on exasperating social conditions the only way they knew how. Straight Outta Compton also features several scenes in which primarily white cops harass black men and women that evoke what is still going on today around the country. Director Gray (Set It Off, A Man Apart) even throws in a fun reference to his 1995 directorial debut, Friday, which was cowritten by and stars Ice Cube, when the band throws a naked woman out of a hotel party, telling her, “Bye, Felicia.” (If you don’t get the reference, look it up.) At the end of the song “Straight Outta Compton,” N.W.A concludes, “Damn, that shit was dope.” The same can be said of Gray’s dynamic film.