On a huge television in on the corner, a ghostly loop of the Rodney King beatings play out a news channel. In one scene, we see Easy-E and his wife in their palatial mansion. Nor do we ever really understand what it is that connects manager Jerry Heller ( Paul Giamatti), a one-time promoter of mainstream rock acts like REO Speedwagon and Journey, to Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell), the hustling heart of NWA. Naming the girl Felicia was not an intentional reference to Friday, but when Jackson ad-libbed the line as a 'coincidental joke', the filmmakers decided to keep it in the film. “You are witnessing history,” a character exclaims at one point, but Gray doesn’t explain why. In the movie Straight Outta Compton (2015), Ice Cube (played by his son, O'Shea Jackson Jr.) said, 'Bye, Felicia', when throwing a girl named Felicia out of his hotel room. The process by which gangsta rap is created is never explored. Early on in the film, we see Ice Cube neatly jotting down lines in a notebook that’s as far behind the curtain as Gray goes. Unlike the excellent Brian Wilson film, Love And Mercy, Gray’s film is untroubled by the creative act. Gray delivers them in programmatic narrative beats, while simultaneously swerving away from accusations of misogyny in the band’s lyrics, associations with extremist organisations and Dre’s assaults on woman. There is too much to focus on – multiple arrests, Cube’s departure, legal sidebars, Dre’s defection to Suge Knight’s Death Row Records, Eazy-E’s death from AIDS. That's good art should evoke intense emotions, and Straight Outta Compton does that in spades.Sadly, Gray is unable to follow-up on such an exuberant first half. It will likely spur furious debates about race, treatment of women and more. This is a movie for 2015, and a good one. The Fergusons and Baltimores aren't new - they're just finally being seen by wider audiences newly horrified. That wasn't the case at N.W.A's concert, or during the Rodney King riots, also depicted in Straight Outta Compton. Thanks in large part to technologies that help people of color to speak out, like Twitter and live-streaming apps, police brutality doesn't get masked and misinterpreted by traditional news coverage. It's why Universal Pictures has hired extra security for Straight Outta Compton's screenings. The rap scene in ' Straight Outta Compton' may not exist in quite the same form today, but the movie's theme of racial tension resonates.īut the single biggest takeaway from Straight Outta Compton is the same as that from Selma: The racial tension depicted resonates because these are not new issues. If there’s one thing that has always characterized Ice Cube, it’s his talent for writing groundbreaking and powerful songs. Dre, still an enormously influential figure today, makes the stakes of the discrimination they face all the more hard-hitting. Those characters are also incredibly familiar - seeing the origins of Dr. The filmmaking is more nuanced than you'll find in the typical biopic, focusing on these characters as humans first. That's a tremendous shame, because Straight Outta Compton is exemplary in so many ways. Gary Gray doesn't just avoid condemning the N.W.A members for their violence against women, he turns it into jokes. In other words: The first few minutes of Straight Outta Compton are, unexpectedly, an action movie, and a. Jump To straight outta compton hotel scene preview 1 Video Parts Jump To straight outta compton hotel scene preview 3 Video Parts Jump To straight outta. The movie has a significant woman problem, both in the lack of substantial female perspectives in the story and in how the main characters treat women. It’s a violent scene that doesn’t valorize E’s gangster days. There are issues with Straight Outta Compton that make fully endorsing it difficult.
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