To its credit, the film attempts to portray Heller evenhandedly, even including a scene where he stands up for N.W.A to hostile police, insisting that "these are not gangbangers, they're artists."įinally, though, free-floating resentment against Heller and other figures casts a shadow over everything, and scenes of special pleading and self-justification inflate the running time to no dramatic purpose. 13, 5:50 p.m.: An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to a Beach Boys movie as "Love and Desire." The correct title is "Love & Mercy."Īs N.W.A becomes more lucrative, however, success breeds dissension, and rancorous inside-baseball legal disputes with Heller and others both influence Cube and Dre to leave the group and cause "Straight Outta Compton" to run out of gas. He becomes their manager and, along with Eazy-E, co-founds the group's Ruthless Records label.Īug. As played by Paul Giamatti - fresh from a similar role in the Beach Boys drama "Love & Mercy" - Heller is the first music establishment figure to believe in the band. It's at this point that Heller, he of the silver tongue with hair to match, enters the picture. Dre coaching the vocally shy Eazy-E through the recording of "Cruisin Down Tha Street.") (One of the film's more charming sequences has Dr. Rather, given the disturbing headlines from around the country, quite the opposite is true, giving sections of the film an inescapable relevance.ĭespite the scorn of a club owner who tells them "trust me, this reality rap stuff isn't going to work, 20 years from now you're going to thank me," these three join with DJ Yella (Neil Brown Jr.) and MC Ren (Aldis Hodge) to form N.W.A, which leads Dre to ask Eazy-E whether he ever thought about financing a record. These words and the situations that called them forth do not, unfortunately, come off as quaint reminders of a bygone era. (Having the last laugh on a whole string of naysayers is a persistent theme here.)Īs for O'Shea Jackson, better known as Ice Cube (and played by the rapper's son O'Shea Jackson Jr.), he lives to be writing what came to be known as gangsta rap but that he calls reality rap, filled with lyrics alive to the constant drumbeat of police harassment in his Compton neighborhood. Dre" Young (Corey Hawkins), a dazzling turntable wizard who lives for his music to such an extent that his mother worries that he won't amount to anything. Making a living is the last thing on the mind of Andre "Dr. Just maybe, he starts to think, there might be an easier way to make a living. Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell), a man with a head for business shown finessing his way around a drug deal gone bad. This story of a group of disadvantaged but talented young men from the same neighborhood fighting their way out of straitened circumstances to international pop music stardom has in outline a lot in common with the saga of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons as related in "Jersey Boys" - though partisans of neither project will be happy with the comparison.īack we go to late-1980s Compton, where cinematographer Matthew Libatique's gritty yet romanticized images introduce us to N.W.A's members, with special emphasis on the big three whom the film posits as crucial to its eventual success.įirst comes Eric Wright, a.k.a.
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