Straight Outta Compton is straight up brilliant

Director: F. Gary Gray
Year: 2015

It starts with Eazy and it ends with Dre. Everything in between is funny, scary, conflicted, fascinating and Straight Outta Compton. I told my wife on the way to see this movie that I almost couldn’t believe it got made. I said that because of how radical and controversial these guys were and what I felt about them when they were doing what they did; it wasn’t just music, it was mind-blowing. For me, a suburban white teen looking for a voice that spoke the rebellion within me - and mind you, there wasn’t a lot to rebel against besides my own teenage nature -- the opening blips of Boyz n the Hood set it off. Eazy E’s voice, impossibly unique, raspy, high and confident, telling a fantastic story that Ice Cube laid down for him and Dre’s ridiculously raw beats, scratches and samples went off like a bomb from the speakers of my friend’s convertible Ambassador. That car was vintage mid-60’s, similar to the vaunted ‘64 Impala, a beast in its own right and with it, the music of NWA and some ill-gotten 40 ounce bottles of Old English 800 malt liquor, these white boys from the San Francisco east bay area suburb of Walnut Creek, CA were rollin’ into rebellion perhaps without much cause, but tremendous spirit.

Forgive the flashback, I felt the need to set the tone for why this movie was so amazing to me - a guy recently described as “the whitest guy in our office” by one colleague - without even having seen a single frame of it. Now being on the other side of having seen it, and looking over my original vinyl of several of their records I'm proud to still own, I can say they journey was even more than I hoped for, completely satisfying, shockingly relevant and very challenging.

The setup is simple. Eric Wright (who becomes Eazy E) is a drug dealer at a time when crack is crushing the inner city areas of Los Angeles. Tanks (a.k.a. “Battle Rams”) literally cruise the streets and run through peoples houses suspected of housing drug labs. That’s not an exaggeration and if it doesn’t freak you out, you haven’t seen the actual footage or haven’t accepted its reality and devastation.  Andre Young (who becomes Dr. Dre) is a local, low-paid DJ and beat creator who is challenged by his mom to make something off his life. O’Shea Jackson (who becomes Ice Cube) is a young man who writes rhymes but doesn’t seem to see much for himself beyond his neighborhood. When things at the club Dre is DJing for don’t go well, even though Ice Cube is wildly celebrated by the crowd when he raps for them, Dre asks Eazy if he’s ever considered doing something besides sell dope.

The idea becomes reality with a few typical and a few not-so-typical speed bumps you see in origin artist stories and NWA is off and running. The film is deeply engaging at an emotional level and the best way to gauge that is not by my review as an avid fan who felt validated by what I thought understood about the group being played out on the screen, but by my wife who doesn’t like rap at all, dislikes the gangsta lifestyle and the personas greatly and yet found herself fascinated by the story. Director F. Gary Gray and writers Jonathan Herman and Andrea Burloff spin a great tale that doesn’t require any backstory or understanding to work. The tropes of artistic struggle, challenging authority, infighting as success grows and backstabbing are all played to great effect throughout. The cast, featuring three relative unknowns as the lead including the real life Ice Cube’s own son playing the part of his father, are fantastic.

Paul Giamatti is his typical excellent self as the controversial figure, Jerry Heller. Heller was Eazy E’s partner and manager who came off far more sympathetic in the film than I would have thought based on what I’d heard about him over the years. The many clashes with police ring potently with the recent stories of police violence across the nation. To the film’s credit, though some of the interactions with the police are very harsh (with certain officers looking like absolute racists), the situations are not completely one-sided. The other interesting parallel was between one of my favorite rock dramas of all time, The Doors, and Straight Outta Compton. Their struggles, against authority and to say what they wanted to say when they wanted to say to whomever they wanted to say it were only separated by geography - with The Doors getting shut down in Miami while NWA got the curtain pulled in Detroit.

NWA was more than they knew at the time. Seen through the prism of time, nearly thirty years after they exploded on the scene, their messages are still important, their voices incredibly powerful and the portrayal in this very well-crafted film, beautifully human.

Resonance Rating: 5 out of 5