Let’s preface this review by discussing something that made me feel older than anything else has in my entire life: When Straight Outta Compton was released in 2015, AARP — the American Association of Retired Persons — nominated it for “Best Intergenerational Film” and “Best Time Capsule”. This means three things: AARP has a film critic; that film critic reviewed Straight Outta Compton; and N.W.A’s first album, which I am pretty certain was just released a few years ago, happened so long ago that a movie about it is now considered a ‘time capsule’. Absolutely disgusting and I for one demand government action.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about the movie, which I finally got around to seeing even though it, too, was released so long ago that it might as well be a vinyl record for all the dang kids. Teens!
Speaking of teens, that’s what most of the guys in N.W.A. were when they hit it big with one of the greatest rap albums of all time in 1988. In a period when we’re kinda scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to biopics, it’s refreshing to see one that’s about a group of genuine historical consequence, and the fact that it’s made by a filmmaker (F. Gary Gray, who directed Friday and a bunch of N.W.A.-adjacent rap videos) with firsthand knowledge of the scene and a genuine affection for the material is a bonus. In the rush to valorize the recent wave of successful box office hits by black directors, let’s not be so quick to ignore the one that set it all off just because he’s a workmanlike filmmaker who’s been paying his dues for a good long time. Straight Outta Compton was a huge smash, and the fact that it made it that big without apologizing for its subjects is worth celebrating.
And boy, does it not apologize. Let’s be perfectly honest here: Straight Outta Compton is a straight-up hagiography, produced by Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, and Eazy-E’s widow. It’s not going to tell us anything revelatory or even mildly uncomfortable about its subjects, which is usually fine (all the right people were howling about not being given a big enough role in the film), but can lead to some pretty uncomfortable omissions. While women are not exactly treated with respect and care in the movie, the record of some of the protagonists with domestic violence, especially Dr. Dre, is fairly gross. Cube’s flirtations with ugly racial stereotypes are also glossed over; “Black Korea” gets nary a mention, and the anti-Semitic comments from “No Vaseline” are dismissed with some handwaving about how it’s really all Jerry Heller’s fault because he’s a huge creep.
Then again, Jerry Heller really was a huge creep, and “Black Korea” shouldn’t be the measure of how we assess Ice Cube’s career, and even Dr. Dre’s shitty behavior with women is a bad way to define his entire life. (Of course, it probably will define the life of people like Dee Barnes and Michel’le, and that’s a big problem, but it isn’t one that this movie is going to solve — or, obviously, even address.) It’s hard to imagine that Eazy’s relationship with Tomica Woods was as saccharine as it’s portrayed as being here, and a lot of the moments portrayed throughout the film are so vitamin-enriched that there’s no reason they should be taken seriously. The timeline of events is fairly muddled, the behind-the-scenes stuff is pretty glossed-over, and there’s no reason to think that this is any more historically accurate a record of events than any shitty Hollywood war movie.
However, if it isn’t exactly a reflection of reality, it does a much better job than most biopics, especially ones about musicians. It manages to capture a lot of the feel of studio creation, of the way that people shoot the shit and fuck around until those moments of inspiration hit, about how the process of making music is always a little shambolic and messy. It’s terrific in the way it conjures the late ’80s and early ’90s in hip-hop, and there are parts of it that have an almost neo-realist vibe. (That’s largely thanks to Gary Gray, a much more accomplished filmmaker than he’s ever given credit for. The opening scene of Straight Outta Compton, where a young Eazy gets caught up in a drug deal gone sour, is one of the most tense and effective such scenes in the last decade, and it pulls you into the story immediately — a quality sadly lacking in a lot of younger filmmakers’ work.) It doesn’t handle drama especially well, but there’s only a few moments where it skirts mawkishness. It’s fun without being frivolous and funny without being comical; a scene where the unraveling N.W.A. listens to Ice Cube annihilate them on a dis track and are torn between being furious at the betrayal and admitting to each other that it’s a hell of a good song is perfectly executed. If its fidelity to history is a little light, its power as a film is unquestionable.
The cast is all shooting with full clips. Tragedy denied us the chance to see Andre Young Jr. play his dad, but Corey Hawkins does a terrific job, and the family-ties angle is admirably held up by O’Shea Jackson Jr., a dead ringer for his dad in both appearance and attitude. (The voice isn’t exact, but that’s what we have dubbing for.) Jason Mitchell, who was fun in Keanu and tremendous in Mudbound, is swell and maybe even gives Eazy-E a little more gravitas than he deserves. Neil Brown Jr. is fantastic as DJ Yella, who gets more of a role in the movie than he really had in the band, but he’s got such easy charm and charisma it doesn’t matter. Paul Giamatti is fine in what’s essentially a high-grade bit of stunt casting, and R. Marcus Taylor does well as another in a series of menacing creeps to play the unstoppably evil Suge Knight; Corey Reynolds is a real scene-stealer as Alonzo Williams.
What Straight Outta Compton does best, though, is to revive the feeling of incredible excitement and fascination that the country felt when N.W.A. hit for the first time. It’s easy to say how important this or that cultural phenomenon was in retrospect, but it’s hard to actually convey that thrill in a tangible way on screen. Gary Gray and company manage to remind us all over again why there was a time when calling a handful of misfits from Compton “the world’s most dangerous group”. I guess that’s why it cinched the AARP’s Best Time Capsule nomination!