Andre “Dr. Dre” Young: Corey Hawkins
Eric “Eazy-E” Wright: Jason Mitchell
Antoine “DJ Yella” Carraby: Neil Brown, Jr.
Lorenzo “MC Ren” Patterson: Aldis Hodge
Tracy “The D.O.C.” Curry: Marion Yates, Jr.
Suge Knight: R. Marcos Taylor
Tomica: Carra Patterson
Kim: Alexandra Shipp
Jerry Heller: Paul Giamatti
Universal Pictures presents
a film directed by F. Gary Gray. Written by Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff
and S. Leigh Savidge & Alan Wenkus. Running time: 147 min. Rated R (for
language throughout, strong sexuality/nudity, violence and drug use).
Despite the conservative
political push of the 80’s lead by the Reagan White House, that decade was a
particularly progressive time in which to grow up. As a child of the 80’s, I
was heavily influenced by pop culture and heavily invested in the politics
centered around it, more so than I even realized at the time. Tipper Gore’s
heralding of the Parental Advisory label that was adopted by the recording
industry seemed a tumultuous event in the eyes of a wide-eyed, music-obsessed
prepubescent. Later, the banning of 2 Live Crew’s controversial “As Nasty As
They Wanna Be” album was a neon sign of the times that most certainly were
a-changin’ despite the wishes and desires of the conservative right. In the
middle of all of this, heading the charge was a rap group from Compton,
California that managed to bridge the gap between many of our diverse cultures
in this country by introducing, not just the black community to gangsta rap,
but the entire country with their debut album “Straight Outta Compton”.
Sadly, almost 30 years after
N.W.A’s seminal album began the tide of change by exposing to the world what
much of the black experience in America was like, we still find ourselves
struggling with the same issues of misunderstanding the racial divide and
dealing with the same issues of racism that were at the heart of what inspired
those musicians at that time. Perhaps it is fitting then that now is the time
that we finally get to see a movie chronicling the struggles of those musicians
in a film that shares its name with their debut album. “Straight Outta Compton”
brings to fruition many years of work by the two most successful members of
that group, Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, to bring their story to the silver screen. As
such, it doesn’t seem the harshest examination by the men it is mostly about,
but it is an intriguing and entertaining document on one of the most influential
bands in modern music.
The film opens in 1986, just
before the core members of N.W.A. (an abbreviation of Niggaz wit’ Attitude)
decide to form their rap crew. These opening scenes remind me a great deal of
Clint Eastwood’s pop music musical from last summer “Jersey Boys” in the way it
introduces us to these artist with their dreams already fully formed, just on
the cusp of having them realized. We first meet Eric “Eazy-E” Wright, who is
not a man with a dream, but seems trapped in the only life presented to him of
pushing drugs and trying to avoid the police. When his friends offer him the
chance to use the money he’s earned on the streets to pursue their music dreams
with them, it comes as a relief to Eric, who seems to understand better than
some that his lifestyle has no future that doesn’t end badly.
Andre “Dr. Dre” Young is
obsessed with music to the point where he misses job interviews set up by his
well-meaning mother just to immerse himself in sound. O’Shea “Ice Cube” Jackson
is the poet of the group and writes like one, always incorporating his own
personal experiences into his lyrics, however frightening or depressing. Cube
and Dre use Dre’s gig as a club DJ to try out Cube’s lyrics and Dre’s beats on
live audiences to the disparagement of the club’s owner. That is until they
convince E to invest some money in some studio time and force him into the sound
booth to record the vocals.
Their album is a success,
credited to Eazy-E as the artist, and so their downfall begins even before
their rise does. A music manager named Jerry Heller, played to excellence by
Paul Giamattti, gets his claws into E after the success of their album and
wrangles his way into taking the whole crew on under E’s Ruthless Records
label. This brings the audience into one of the more exciting sequences of the
film as director F. Gary Gray and his screenwriters sweep us into the thrills
of their success. The band’s songs cross boundaries and send them on a national
tour to support the album. Gray shows us the inspiration and recording of their
greatest hits, including the title track “Straight Outta Compton” and “F*&%
the Police”. I remember there was a kid who was not loved by my own crew of
friends in high school and every time we passed his house we’d sing “F*&%
the [insert family name here]” with someone acting as beatbox and everything.
I am reminded of “Jersey
Boys” once again in the way Gray treats the material as almost a musical of
sorts, filling his soundtrack with the band’s songs and using them to show
their own progression, including their solo efforts after Cube leaves the
group. We’re even shown some of the other influential talents they produced and
inspired, such as Snoop Dogg and 2 Pac and the origins of some of their biggest
hits. Suge Knight is presented here as the cause of much of the rift between
the three core members of the crew. While his reputation backs up much of what
we see here in the opportunistic way he divides the artists and runs amok with
his and Dre’s own label Death Row Records, Suge makes for an easy scapegoat for
much of Dre’s alleged sins, of which little is represented here and Dre excuses
himself with but a line about his regret.
While both “Jersey Boys” and
“Compton” avoid much of the personal lives of their subjects, Eastwood’s examination
of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons does a much better job of getting into
the psyches of the artists. I would’ve liked to get to know E, Dre and Cube
much more than this film allows. The three, until now unknown, actors playing
these monster personalities do an amazing job with what they’re given. Cube’s
own son plays him the film. While the relationship between these three are
fairly thoroughly explored, they spend too much time working separately for the
film’s rather fleeting representation of the other relationships in their
lives. E’s relationship with Jerry is one of the focal points of the film, but
the writers never explain to satisfaction just how Jerry so successfully turns
E away from his friends, the men who first put him in front of the mic. I also
would’ve like to know how these artists were formed into the men they are at
the beginning of the story. E’s street life is once again the most satisfying
of the three backgrounds as it is a story we’ve seen before. While we’re given
a taste of Dre’s family life before N.W.A., it never explains how music became
his obsession. We are given absolutely nothing about Cube’s life before music,
although it presents him as a family man after his solo and film successes.
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