Just came home from this.......I am from San Diego, I was born in 85 and came into hip hop in like 97, for whatever reason I NEVER was as big with west coast..It was always more eastcoast/south, starting with Mase, Jay, Nas, etc etc....and I missed the NWA era, by the time I came in Cube was making movies and 'War & Peace', which I loved, I watched 'Friday' on USA when I was like 13...and Dre dropped 'The Chronic' 2001 when I was in 8th grade...I will say it's so dope to have a hip hop biopic, and really trace the origins of these iconic stars of an entire generation and genre....even if they are not MY favorites, what the stand for, and what they created i what we all love...Just what they did with this movie is commendable, the fact of where they came from, and what they did for the game....you can't deny that...I give it up for them...
From the opening shots F. Gary Gray seems to have found his footing again as a director, loved the grimy dope spot scenes of Compton at night, the enclosed world they all lived in....It felt tense and chaotic, oppressed and bleak....Dre's opener was less so, stock dialogue and wooden lines burdened his character from the beginning, Cubes was solid...while I thought some aspects of the 'bus stop' scene were good, it seemed very on the nose and convenient, of course you never know if a story like that was real..I really doubt it, but it does beg the question does it work for a movie. Gray got the characters right, but I think verged on over the top, and this repeats throughout. The rising scenes are done well, the police were a little overplayed and felt like stock villains, which is no doubt how they were perceived......it just felt a little much at times. I loved Easy E and Cube....They shined, even with some clunky lines and poorly written scenes like the death of Dre's brother...That was bad. 'An accident"??? Borderline laughable. Again, I have no idea if they all really got off the bus and hugged, but begs the question, should it have been in the movie?
Gray starts to fumble more and more going forward with obnoxious and distracting score music, piercing every scene, almost equivalent to a laugh track...Cue ominous music....cue lightly triumphant music.....Suge Knight's scene bordered on really good....yet there was an edge missing, I laughed because I love all these characters so much, and the whole saga is just something so fascinating and beloved by me.....but, also there was an element of comic book villain to it, which felt off. Suge was presented as barely a real person, and his antics didn't seem quite right in tone. The diss track and the back and forth saga, of course lacked the final tracks, but were some of the movies better moments....It really felt alive wit Suge and the studio sessions and music...It faltered as it showed Dre meeting his wife, awful writing, and broke down more as it chronicled Easy's downfall....no because of the acting, just the writing....'Teh Chronic' scene was over the top....The coughs were apparently accurate, it just seemed cheap at times though. And the Jimmy Iovine scene? What bothers me most was how sanitized everything was.
The Pac scene was badly mishandled, as well as the distracting obviously WAY off time frame, his performance was about on the level of Anthony Mackie in 'Notorious'. Contained no trace of the dark and frentic energy which consumed Pac, and separated him from Dr Dre, musically and personally... I don't know if Pac is just such an icon, he can never be portrayed, but they need to do better.....Just a mess of a scene. Then Dre barking on a room full of Mob Piru's and Suge? In what was a weird reenactment of the Mark Bell incident? Of course the end scene was laughable.....I bet Dre just never came to work and sent word through an attorney. and LOL at everyone saying how many dudes did he knock out? Yeah, Dre was def. 'recollecting' a lot in the writing room....The ending montage lost me when it become Aftermath/Interscope/Apple PR, I thought that was tacky and took away from the message....
I would love to see a Pac/Death Row movie, but it needs to be darker...THis won't cut it. Better directing, better writing, edgier, more violent..needs an artistic hand in it...Gray was very glossy and mainstream in his handling of it.... cinematography is bland, or heavy handed, like those Watts shots.....It's an enjoyable/watchable movie, but this should have been better, I maybe didn't expect it to be....and any further hip hop movies...need more of an edge. Fuqua is probably washed at this point, but the movie needed his eye for violence and authentic street shyt....This felt very off at points....This is B- to me. Worth watching, and a triumphant nod to the game and the fans...loved the in jokes and 'Felicia' moment...
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. How long before it hits dvd
he became one of my top favorite rappers. His run for AMW to Lethal Injection is one of the best.