Director: F. Gary Gray
Year Released: 2015
Rating: 2.0
Biopic about the formation of notorious 1980's gangsta rap outfit N.W.A - including Ice Cube (O'Shea Jackson Jr.), Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins) and Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell) - and their inevitable rise to fame and eventual dissolution over a contract dispute with manager Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti) which had Cube going solo and Dre getting into a shaky partnership with the infamous Suge Knight (R. Marcos Taylor). The first half of this is content showing the (primarily Caucasian) police as being the villain while the second half is busy portraying Suge as the bad guy (he assaults people for parking in the wrong spot, what a psychopath) ... and largely plays it safe (and unsurprising) in its storytelling (as noted elsewhere, it omits a lot of details, including Dre's involvement with Dee Barnes). As a pre-teen raised in the suburbs, when I first saw the music video for "Straight Outta Compton" on Yo! MTV Raps I was placed in a state of shock (and awe): I recognized these young men were not just angry but willing to express that anger artistically, and that sense of rage and disgust resonated with me, but this movie contains none of that frustration. I still consider the album Straight Outta Compton one of the seminal (and most controversial) albums of the 20th century (that's not hyperbole, either) - this film is fine for (1.) nostalgia and (2.) to touch on current issues involving police brutality (although all the police officers here are stereotypically cruel).
