Saved by the bell… or actually, the battering ram. He actually gets away because of a police raid.
It opens strong with Eazy in a tense stand-off in a crackhouse. In the early scenes this is about the best N.W.A movie you could hope for.
And it’s probly true that Heller talked Eazy out of committing a murder (though he later said he should’ve let him do it). You can see why Eazy, when benefiting from him, enjoyed his company. It is true that they would’ve had a hard time getting their music heard without him. Giamatti plays him as an asshole, a chubby old guy who carries himself with swagger, flies into a few tantrums and seems fishy every time he claims “the contracts are being finalized as we speak!” But wisely the movie does give him some good qualities. Rourke and Tattoo.” Fair or not, Heller is the poster boy for white people who take financial advantage of rappers (see industry rule #4,080). Dre’s classic album The Chronic, Snoop refers to Jerry and Eazy as “Mr. It’s okay that he’s a recognizable star, because this is someone we’ve heard of more than seen. The casting of Giamatti as Heller is important too. Both of them appear on Cube’s 2010 album I Am the West.) (I was thinking I’d seen him as hype man to Cube but I guess that was a different son, the one he calls Doughboy. He also does his father proud when he has to rap. In the jheri curl years especially young Cube’s belligerent scowl and eponymous Attitude seem to be reborn on screen. He doesn’t straight up imitate his father as much as another actor might, but he looks more like him than anybody could without digital effects. At one point he has the line “I have a baby on the way,” referring to himself. If I were him I’d hang a GHOSTS OF MARS poster on the set to lower the bar a little. Like Mario Van Peebles in BAADASSSSS! he’s a son playing his famous father, but he also has the hurdle of this being his first time acting. Still, I think he does a good job of creating a sympathetic character who we can like and understand even when he’s wrong.Īnd then there’s O’Shea Jackson Jr. Mitchell has Eazy’s small stature, but not quite his high pitched voice. But since he was the one who got sick he’s also the galvanizing event that brought them to put that all in the past and remember that they’re brothers. He was the one stuck in bitter feuds with both Cube and Dre after they left. He’s the one who was seen as conspiring with manager Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti) and ripping the other members off. He was the actual criminal whose drug money funded their record company, who had to be talked into becoming a rapper, and as they show in the movie had his rhymes written for him and recorded one line at a time. Eazy is such an enigmatic figure in rap history because he’s kind of the bad guy of N.W.A, but also the martyr. The trickiest one is Jason Mitchell ( DRAGON EYES) as Eazy-E. Aldis Hodge (one of Zeus’s kids in DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE!) plays MC Ren, who isn’t really given much focus other than showing up at the studio and recording, but he’s got the right presence. ( NEVER BACK DOWN, FAST AND FURIOUS) as DJ Yella is the comic relief of the movie, making a memorable character out of the member of the crew we the public are least familiar with. In many ways this is his story, as the dreamer who convinces them all to come together and make music in the first place, and who is so happy just being able to create that he’s slow in recognizing the ways he’s being taken advantage of. He really captures Dre’s way of speaking and his quiet focus. Corey Hawkins ( NON STOP) is an especially impressive find as Dr. Gary Gray ( SET IT OFF) and friends absolutely succeeded in the hardest and most important part of the job – figuring out who the hell can play N.W.A – and that goes a long way. I can’t honestly claim it all works as a movie, but it celebrates N.W.A without being totally embarrassing about it, so I couldn’t help but enjoy watching it.ĭirector F. It captures some of the vitality and power of N.W.A and also has most of the weaknesses of biopics.
N.W.A, to me, seems like the best choice for this treatment.Īnd their movie is pretty much what you’d expect. movie and possibly Public Enemy would work, but I don’t know if there’s much of an ending on that. is the only rapper to get one of these (the better-than-I-expected NOTORIOUS), though I remember when Steve James of HOOP DREAMS fame was supposed to be doing one on Grandmaster Flash starring Don Cheadle. I’ve been thrilled about the idea of an N.W.A biopic for years. Unless they already know alot about N.W.A, which come to think of it I do expect of your mother and your sister. Or at least it will give them more of an idea of what N.W.A was all about. STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON is a movie that will smother your mother and make your sister think it loves her.
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