Straight Outta Compton Review

8.5 out of 10

Straight Outta Compton Cast:

O’Shea Jackson, Jr. as Ice Cube

Corey Hawkins as Dr. Dre

Jason Mitchell as Eazy E

Aldis Hodge as MC Ren

Neil Brown, Jr. as DJ Yella

Paul Giamatti as Jerry Heller

Marlon Yates Jr. as The D.O.C.

Corey Reynolds as Alonzo Williams

Alexandra Shipp as Kimberly Woodruff

Angela Elayne Gibbs as Doris Jackson

Bruce Beatty as Hosie Jackson

Lisa Renee Pitts as Verna Young

Keith Stanfield as Snoop Dogg

Marcus Taylor as Suge Knight

Sheldon A. Smith as Warren G

Carra Patterson as Tomica Woods

Elena Goode as Nicole Threatt

Keith Powers as Tyree Crayon

Directed by F. Gary Gray 

Review:

Like any artform, popular music is both a reflection of and an answer to the world surrounding its creation, a reflexive outburst its creators cannot help but unleash.  Such was the case with rap music and the late ’80s version of gangsta rap which drove the hip-hop explosion and crafted the music world for the current generation.

And yet by all appearances that cultural acclimation has done little to change the world it came from, still adrift in poverty and violence. It’s a reality which raises legitimate questions about the old cache that art and truth-telling lead to societal change and whether or not we’ve been deluding ourselves on that score.

Putting some of the individuals who led the way under the microscope, Straight Outta Compton examines how true that is through lives of some of the artists who led the way in a ceaselessly entertaining biopic of rare edge following the almost accidental manifestation (and far more unavoidable dissolution) of N.W.A from the combination of individuals of talent which could not be denied and the people who were there to take advantage of them.

For groups like N.W.A and other early pioneers of West Coast rap, that means a world of racism, poverty and hopelessness which can’t help but produce some sort of response from those caught up in it. In the hands of artists like Ice Cube (Jackson, Jr.) and Dr. Dre (Hawkins), that means reactions to police suspicion and violence every bit as pervasive as roving gangbangers looking for targets to take their own frustrations out on.

While a very familiar situation – in part because it has been used as the grist for many films about Compton-like neighborhoods and in part because it is still very much the status quo today – screenwriters Andrea Berloff and Jonathan Herman (working from a story by Berloff, Alan Wenkus and S. Leigh Savidge) manage to make the early going sing even in the direst of moments, be it introducing founding member Eazy E (Mitchell) bounding over rooftops to escape a police armored car or Ice Cube being menaced by a gangbanger encouraging Cube and his fellow youths to finish school and make something of themselves … at gunpoint.

That mixture of wit and pathos fills most of Compton’s excessive running time, keeping it entertaining and fresh even when it is being incredibly on-the-nose. Fortunately that happens less and less as the newfound stars – building a rabid following that pushes them into the mainstream – become more and more enmeshed in the world of glamour and success, their characters gel and the writers figure out their voices, pulling a group of interesting and distinct individuals from the miasma of potentially-clichéd gangster types they started as.

With success comes a new wave of problems as outside elements try to leech off their success, driving wedges between the primary visionaries and sending them into conflict with one another while simultaneously tempting them with physical pleasures to distract them from their work. Mixing and matching both the problems of cultural transformation and personal disasters, Compton frequently has its hands full juggling the reaction of the rest of America to thoughts N.W.A is expressing with the tensions within the group as a sudden influx of money divides them as surely as it has anyone else – perhaps the one thing all cultural groups everywhere have in common.

Most of that is focused on Hawkins’ Dr. Dre, recognized early on as the goose who lays the golden eggs but one more interested in making art than in what his so-called partners are doing with his money. If much of the first half is wondering if he will notice how Eazy and manager Jerry Heller (Giamatti) are using him, much of the second is wondering if he will notice that business partner Suge Knight (Taylor) is doing the same thing.

Yes, it’s a bit repetitive, but so is life and so are people–we tend to make the same mistakes over and over and rarely if ever manage to get loose from the cycle. And if people don’t change much then neither can their actions, which makes the cry of those ensnared in the institutional racism of the ’80s and ’90s (with the Rodney King trial and LA riots playing a large part in the background of later events) that much more important for those living today, showcasing how little things have changed in the intervening twenty years and how little influence art may actually have on societal change, nifty Bob Dylan stories notwithstanding.

It’s a subtle and difficult idea and one director F. Gary Gray handles with aplomb in the best work of his career, refusing to let it either smother or get lost in the ordeals of the group as they grow past their initial speed bumps and come to the difficult realization that not everything they have clung to from the past, as much as it made them what they are, should be kept. That they (and by proxy the culture) must move forward and become something new, somehow without giving up what they are.

Again, and not surprisingly, it’s Dre around whom the main themes revolve as all the themes of cultural realization come to a head when he is forced to hold off recording a new song to deal with the antics of Knight and his cohorts, illuminating for him how far he has come from the streets, how ridiculous its worst aspects really were and the need to leave those aspects (and anyone who can’t or won’t separate from them) behind.  

If the themes revolve around Dre (often following belatedly in Cube’s wake), it is Mitchell’s Eazy E who comes across repeatedly as the star of the show holding down every scene with a mix of comedy, pathos and restrained drama none of the other actors can match in part because he has the most dramatic natural arc as Cube and Dre follow their destinies to ever higher levels of success while Eazy descends into the aftermath of memory.

That said, like all history (or stories ‘based on real events’) the tale is written by the victors, driving a narrative which goes very easy on E in how much N.W.A was used while also pushing the other members of the group to the backburner. It’s a big story and choices have to be made, but that becomes harder to justify as the film heads into its 10th reel and the film is still trying to ring the last moments of interest from the Big Three’s lives.

To that degree there is nothing actually revolutionary about Straight Outta Compton, but there doesn’t really need to be, either. It does not reinvent the musical biopic as a genre; merely hones it to a razor’s edge, transcending a rote repetition of N.W.A’s history to make a statement about the world that made them possible and how it must change. More than that it suggests that if transformation (both for creators and their audience) only comes in small doses, the fact that it exists at all says much about actual hope for the future.