Let’s get one thing clear: if you were wondering if Straight Outta Compton is a movie to take Grandma to on Sunday afternoon – it’s not. What we have here is the gritty true story of the rise of the N.W.A (Google the acronym yourself) – a rap group that produced two of the biggest names in music today: Dr. Dre and Ice Cube.
This is a rags-to-riches story told unlike any other. We witness N.W.A.’s meteoric climb into mainstream pop culture as the band members face adversity from their families, friends, agents and even the local law enforcement. The latter is particularly compelling, set as it is in LA during late-1980s and early-1990s – a time of great racial tension.
It was also a period where Compton was a neighbourhood famous for its insanely high crime rates and not much else. Here, Dre and Cube (and also Eazy-E) sit inside their homes, write rhymes, produce beats and dream of success. Their music quickly turned into an artistic expression of their repression in a race-divided culture and the environment in which they were raised: one of guns, drugs and gangs.
Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti – San Andreas, The Amazing Spiderman 2) is the manager who would eventually put these rappers, and their neighbourhood, on the map through their debut album Straight Outta Compton. As a result of this success, there are montages filled with the trapping of success: big crowds, booze and boobs – the rockstar life. Inevitably, all of this soon unravels as pay disputes and egos get in the way, and each artist goes their separate directions.
Director F. Gary Gray, typically famous for forgettable films (The Italian Job (2003) and Be Cool) has stamped a unique and likable style on this movie. The camera seems to always be right in the action… tight with conflict or moving with the characters. This style instills a sense that we are in the moment of situations many of us will never experience. The cinematography is totally suited and illustrates the setting perfectly.
Massive hip-hop props to the three leading actors for Dre, Eazy-E and Ice Cube, especially O’Shea Jackson Jr. (the actual son of the real-life Ice Cube) and looks eerily like his father. Their performances are dynamic, realistic and emotional, all compounding with a well rounded script and a well of source material to create scenes there isn’t a boring scene in the whole movie!
A small drawback is that the act structure loses the plot towards the end of the film, you aren’t sure when (or if) this will ever end, and you start to detach. And when it does finish there are still loose ends left unresolved which makes you feel a tad unsatisfied.
Overall, biographical films seem to always be more interesting than fiction – the realism is more immersive. This is evident in Straight Outta Compton where the narrative flow is different and believable. When coupled with an amazing soundtrack featuring all the classics of 90s raps it delivers a surprisingly great cinematic experience.
Straight Outta Compton – 8/10.
Straight Outta Compton is now showing at Palace Electric Cinema, NewActon.
