Straight Outta Compton

Director: F. Gary Gray
Writer: Jonathan Herman, Andrea Berloff
Stars: O'Shea Jackson Jr., Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell
Strengths: Story, Acting, Environment
Weakness: Not an exact representation of their history
Runtime: 147 minutes
Rating: 3.5/5

Plot: The group NWA emerges from the mean streets of Compton in Los Angeles, California, in the mid-1980s and revolutionizes Hip Hop culture with their music and tales about life in the hood.

Review: Straight Outta Compton is an explosively entertaining hip-hop biopic that raps home truths about race and police brutality as timely now as they were during the 1980s in Compton, California. That's where five black teens — known as Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, DJ Yella and MC Ren — channelled their fury into the beats of N.W.A, short for Niggaz With Attitude. The band didn't invent gangsta rap, but N.W.A were surely the delivery room, sparked by near-constant rousting from the LAPD. Director F. Gary Gray, working from a script by Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff, doesn't supply halos for his protagonists. Sex, drugs and the thug life figure prominently. The atmosphere is charged as cinematographer Matthew Libatique creates striking visuals that pull us into the fray. Cube's look-alike son, O'Shea Jackson Jr., does a smashing job playing his dad, blending sensitivity with seething intensity. It's Cube and his buddy DJ Andre "Dr. Dre" Young (a charmingly sly Corey Hawkins) who persuade drug dealer Eric "Eazy-E" Wright (Jason Mitchell) to finance a label, Ruthless Records. Mitchell's fierce portrayal of the mercurial Eazy (who died of AIDS complications in 1995) is award-calibre, especially when he haltingly, then thrillingly, lays down vocals on "Boyz-n-the-Hood."

Straight Outta Compton plays better when it's outside the box, showing us N.W.A power and the consequences of abusing it. Maybe the movie would have been better if it didn't sidestep the band's misogyny, and malicious infighting. Regardless, this film stands as an amazing, electrifying piece of hip-hop history.

Reviewed by Intisab Shahriyar