Straight Outta Bedroom Analysis
• “Straight Outta Compton,” an exultant rap-to-riches story about the group N.W.A., opens with a blast of action-film braggadocio. It’s night sometime in 1986, and the group’s future headliner and fly in the ointment, Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell), is taking care of shady business. With the camera dogging his steps so closely that you half expect him to shout “Heel,” he hotfoots it into a cramped, bleak house that has been prepped for maximum horrorfilm suggestiveness, with lighting as dark as a dungeon, a Welcome Wagon of tough-guy scowls and a she-devil who’s soon holding a shotgun next to a bare leg, her gat and her gam each loaded and lethal. The director, F. Gary Gray, has a modern commercial filmmaker’s sense of space and rhythm that’s announced
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in this scene’s mobile camerawork, loose compositions and functional editing. Yet Eazy’s peewee pugnaciousness (he’s a shrimp who towers over villainy with his defiance) suggests that Mr. Gray has a fondness for old James Cagney movies, too. Like an original Hollywood gangster, Eazy leads with his charisma (he’s a beautiful bluffer), motor mouth and quick feet, which he puts to nimble use when chaos erupts in the house, shattering it into a cacophony of sights and sounds: shrieking sirens, screaming bullets, snarling dog. The scene defines Eazy as a great escape artist and gestures toward the breakouts soon to come, including the one that takes a churn of menacing theater and darting action — seduces you with its noirish vibe while laying down a few recurring themes, including the urgent refrain that black lives are at stake. That melody wends through the movie, which shares its title with the group’s 1988 record and tracks a fistful of upstarts who — with beats, smarts, corrosive poetry and powerful rhetoric — helped introduce gangster rap to an alternately freaked-out and receptive world. It’s a story driven by classic tensions: struggle and triumph, division and conquest, group and individual. In some meaningful ways, it is as familiar a bootstraps account as “The Social Network,” David Fincher’s dramatization of Mark Zuckerberg’s ascendancy, even if “Straight Outta Compton” is also about black art and autonomy as means of resistance. The movie takes flight in Compton, a city 20 miles or so south and many light-years away from the Hollywood sign. A beacon of black success in the 1950s, Compton had become a symbol of despair by the time Eazy-E formed N.W.A., and here primarily serves as a signifier for a poor, black area under the police boot. Written by Andrea Berloff and Jonathan Herman, the movie isn’t big on specifics. One minute, Eazy is dodging bullets; the next, he, Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins) and Ice Cube (his look-alike son O’Shea Jackson Jr.) are performing before a rainbow nation of fistpumpers. If you didn’t know the N.W.A. members MC Ren (Aldis Hodge) and DJ Yella (Neil Brown Jr.) before, you’re not likely to know them after, as they’re inconsequential to this telling. Another early associate, Arabian Prince, doesn’t even rate a spot in the final credits. Winners write history; so it is, too, in a movie that distills N.W.A. into its biggest marquee attractions: Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube. In this edition, Eazy (a.k.a. Eric Wright), having decided that music is a safer hustle than drugs, grudgingly steps up to the mike in a recording studio to rap Ice Cube’s song “Boyz-n-the-Hood” for Dre, who’s on the mixing board. Mr. Gray stages this with a playful comedy that signals the men’s camaraderie. He warms the exchange by making much of Dre’s double-take amusement at Eazy’s atonality, even as the moment — like the movie in general — sidesteps the raw, visceral impact of the words and music that distinguished the group, winning it fans and foes alike. (“Little did he know I had a loaded 12 gauge/One sucker dead, L.A. Times front page.”) Soon enough, the hungry strivers metamorphose into hot properties who, after a frenzied wallow in fame, face assorted truths, along with career-defining forks in the road. For Eazy, that includes bonding with the group’s manager, Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti, wearing a vanilla mop), an avuncular weasel who becomes every white hustler who has ever skimmed the top off black talent. For a while, the curious, underexplored relationship between Eazy and Heller threatens to overwhelm the movie, partly because Mr.
Mitchell and Mr. Giamatti consistently out-act the rest of the performers. But then Ice Cube sniffs around, calls foul and exits the group, becoming a hit-making singularity whose arguments with his old cronies play out in his music and sometimes in real fist-to-jaw action. Much of this is good, glib fun; sometimes it’s just glib, partly because Mr. Gray isn’t above recycling visual clichés, like the livin’-large bacchanals and their pinwheeling female buttocks. The partying is as bland as that in any all-purpose music video and feels more like another script signpost (and audience-pandering) than a serious attempt to get out what it means to be young, black, gifted, fabulously wealthy and much desired. Mr. Gray does far better when the story edges into heavier, more dappled realms, as in a terrific scene in which Heller is threatened by a thug thwho melts in and out of the night, and another jittery sequence in which the police harass Dre and the rest because, it’s suggested, they’re young black men. Crucially, the cop crew is more diverse than N.W.A. As that police diversity implies, there is far more to the
N.W.A. story — and how its rise signified for a people, the popular culture and the country at a particular Reagan-era flash point — than good times, bad times and throwing expletives at the law, as it did in a notorious song. “Straight Outta Compton” is being released 50 years after the Watts riots and in the midst of a national focus on black victims of police shootings. The movie acknowledges the larger agonizing picture, but mostly it celebrates a crew of Horatio Algers of another color who become crossover kings turned establishment titans. To that expedient end, contradictions bristle rather than explode in a movie that speaks to fighting the power (to borrow a message from another music legend) that it also embraces. It’s another story of ultimate outsiders turned ultimate insiders, which makes it as blissfully American as apple pie, low riders and gangster rap itself. “Straight Outta Compton” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Language! Straight Outta Compton Opens on Friday Directed by F. Gary Gray; written by Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff, based on a story by S. Leigh Savidge, Alan Wenkus and Ms. Berloff; director of photography, Matthew Libatique; edited by Billy Fox and Michael Tronick; music by Joseph Trapanese; production design by Shane Valentino; costumes by Kelli Jones; produced by Mr. Gray, Ice Cube, Tomica Woods-Wright, Matt Alvarez, Scott Bernstein and Dr. Dre; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 2 hours 22 minutes.
in this scene’s mobile camerawork, loose compositions and functional editing. Yet Eazy’s peewee pugnaciousness (he’s a shrimp who towers over villainy with his defiance) suggests that Mr. Gray has a fondness for old James Cagney movies, too. Like an original Hollywood gangster, Eazy leads with his charisma (he’s a beautiful bluffer), motor mouth and quick feet, which he puts to nimble use when chaos erupts in the house, shattering it into a cacophony of sights and sounds: shrieking sirens, screaming bullets, snarling dog. The scene defines Eazy as a great escape artist and gestures toward the breakouts soon to come, including the one that takes a churn of menacing theater and darting action — seduces you with its noirish vibe while laying down a few recurring themes, including the urgent refrain that black lives are at stake. That melody wends through the movie, which shares its title with the group’s 1988 record and tracks a fistful of upstarts who — with beats, smarts, corrosive poetry and powerful rhetoric — helped introduce gangster rap to an alternately freaked-out and receptive world. It’s a story driven by classic tensions: struggle and triumph, division and conquest, group and individual. In some meaningful ways, it is as familiar a bootstraps account as “The Social Network,” David Fincher’s dramatization of Mark Zuckerberg’s ascendancy, even if “Straight Outta Compton” is also about black art and autonomy as means of resistance. The movie takes flight in Compton, a city 20 miles or so south and many light-years away from the Hollywood sign. A beacon of black success in the 1950s, Compton had become a symbol of despair by the time Eazy-E formed N.W.A., and here primarily serves as a signifier for a poor, black area under the police boot. Written by Andrea Berloff and Jonathan Herman, the movie isn’t big on specifics. One minute, Eazy is dodging bullets; the next, he, Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins) and Ice Cube (his look-alike son O’Shea Jackson Jr.) are performing before a rainbow nation of fistpumpers. If you didn’t know the N.W.A. members MC Ren (Aldis Hodge) and DJ Yella (Neil Brown Jr.) before, you’re not likely to know them after, as they’re inconsequential to this telling. Another early associate, Arabian Prince, doesn’t even rate a spot in the final credits. Winners write history; so it is, too, in a movie that distills N.W.A. into its biggest marquee attractions: Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube. In this edition, Eazy (a.k.a. Eric Wright), having decided that music is a safer hustle than drugs, grudgingly steps up to the mike in a recording studio to rap Ice Cube’s song “Boyz-n-the-Hood” for Dre, who’s on the mixing board. Mr. Gray stages this with a playful comedy that signals the men’s camaraderie. He warms the exchange by making much of Dre’s double-take amusement at Eazy’s atonality, even as the moment — like the movie in general — sidesteps the raw, visceral impact of the words and music that distinguished the group, winning it fans and foes alike. (“Little did he know I had a loaded 12 gauge/One sucker dead, L.A. Times front page.”) Soon enough, the hungry strivers metamorphose into hot properties who, after a frenzied wallow in fame, face assorted truths, along with career-defining forks in the road. For Eazy, that includes bonding with the group’s manager, Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti, wearing a vanilla mop), an avuncular weasel who becomes every white hustler who has ever skimmed the top off black talent. For a while, the curious, underexplored relationship between Eazy and Heller threatens to overwhelm the movie, partly because Mr.
Mitchell and Mr. Giamatti consistently out-act the rest of the performers. But then Ice Cube sniffs around, calls foul and exits the group, becoming a hit-making singularity whose arguments with his old cronies play out in his music and sometimes in real fist-to-jaw action. Much of this is good, glib fun; sometimes it’s just glib, partly because Mr. Gray isn’t above recycling visual clichés, like the livin’-large bacchanals and their pinwheeling female buttocks. The partying is as bland as that in any all-purpose music video and feels more like another script signpost (and audience-pandering) than a serious attempt to get out what it means to be young, black, gifted, fabulously wealthy and much desired. Mr. Gray does far better when the story edges into heavier, more dappled realms, as in a terrific scene in which Heller is threatened by a thug thwho melts in and out of the night, and another jittery sequence in which the police harass Dre and the rest because, it’s suggested, they’re young black men. Crucially, the cop crew is more diverse than N.W.A. As that police diversity implies, there is far more to the
N.W.A. story — and how its rise signified for a people, the popular culture and the country at a particular Reagan-era flash point — than good times, bad times and throwing expletives at the law, as it did in a notorious song. “Straight Outta Compton” is being released 50 years after the Watts riots and in the midst of a national focus on black victims of police shootings. The movie acknowledges the larger agonizing picture, but mostly it celebrates a crew of Horatio Algers of another color who become crossover kings turned establishment titans. To that expedient end, contradictions bristle rather than explode in a movie that speaks to fighting the power (to borrow a message from another music legend) that it also embraces. It’s another story of ultimate outsiders turned ultimate insiders, which makes it as blissfully American as apple pie, low riders and gangster rap itself. “Straight Outta Compton” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Language! Straight Outta Compton Opens on Friday Directed by F. Gary Gray; written by Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff, based on a story by S. Leigh Savidge, Alan Wenkus and Ms. Berloff; director of photography, Matthew Libatique; edited by Billy Fox and Michael Tronick; music by Joseph Trapanese; production design by Shane Valentino; costumes by Kelli Jones; produced by Mr. Gray, Ice Cube, Tomica Woods-Wright, Matt Alvarez, Scott Bernstein and Dr. Dre; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 2 hours 22 minutes.