N.W.A biopic moves to its own beat
Print Edition
THE shotgun blast of fury that first emanated from South Central Los Angeles in 1988 still packs a punch.
The new, very much authorized biopic of N.W.A, “Straight Outta Compton,” aims to cement the legacy of the pioneering hip-hop group that brought gangsta rap to the mainstream and sparked endless culture debates.
Dr Dre, Ice Cube and Easy-E — the three most central members of the five-some — were, from the start, the savviest of self-promoters, casting themselves as violent gangsters and exalting the hard streets they came from.
So it’s fitting that they should shape their big-screen treatment, too, in a commercial package that’s brashly winning and unapologetically self-serving.
Their brash rebuttal to the aggressive policing policies of the day could hardly be more salient now, and director F. Gary Gray drives this home repeatedly in scenes of confrontation with the police. They often silently populate the background, always a hovering threat.
Especially entertaining are the early scenes that assemble the group: the pugnacious lyricist Ice Cube (Cube’s son O’Shea Jackson Jr.), Easy-E, the older hustler with enough cash to pay for recording sessions (Jason Mitchell), Dr Dre, the ambitious DJ (Corey Hawkins), MC Ren (Aldis Hodge) and DJ Yella (Neil Brown Jr).
Too profane for radio play, they emerge as an underground sensation, filling arenas and drawing the skeptical eye of the FBI. Their revel in the women and money, but fissures soon crack open.
The film, produced by Dr Dre, Ice Cube and Easy-E’s widow, Tomica Woods-Wright, feels like a compromise of “Rashomon” perspectives: old friends still assigning blame (mostly on Heller and Knight), working through guilt (Easy-E died in 1995 after contracting AIDS) and finding a flattering version of the past they can all live with, even if it means touching on fiction.
But the movies, particularly the studio-made, summer variety, are seldom what you would call “hard.” Nor do they make a habit of telling the stories of searing, provocative black voices that rise out of urban nightmares. “Straight Outta Compton” never forgets where its stars came from, and neither should we.
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