Dre (COREY HAWKINS) in “Straight Outta Compton”. (L to R) Ice Cube (O’SHEA JACKSON, JR.) and Dr. (Not surprisingly, it was the 24-year-old Jackson Jr. As far as groupie-removal strategies go, it's hard to get more Internet-savvy than that. is also an emcee who performs under the name OMG) playing his father as a young rapper who will in a few years become the star and co-writer of a movie that features a throwaway line, which another 20 years later will become a meme and a discomfiting reality show. It's the canniest moment of the film: a young rapper (Jackson Jr. The theater I saw the movie in erupted-as will most theaters. Everyone, that is, except for Felicia, who Ice Cube (portrayed by his son, O'Shea Jackson Jr.) pushes out of his way and out of the celebration with a single line. An angry dude shows up to their hotel-room afterparty looking for his girlfriend Felicia after a brief hallway standoff, our heroes and their companions for the night head back into the suite. But what stands is an amazement, an electrifying piece of hip-hop history that speaks urgently to right now.Straight Outta Compton is by no means a comedy, but it has its share of laugh lines, and the biggest one comes right around the movie's halfway point, as N.W.A is on tour for the first time and enjoying the fruits of their newfound fame. Would the movie be better if it didn’t sidestep the band’s misogyny, gay-bashing and malicious infighting? No shit. Straight Outta Compton plays better when it’s outside the box, showing us N.W.A power and the consequences of abusing it. The band’s white manager, Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti), instigates a rift that sends Cube on his own and Dre into an unholy alliance with Death Row Records founder Marion “Suge” Knight (a very scary R. But credit Gray for tracing the group’s rise and fall with dramatic vigor. The movie is never as potent as it is in that groundbreaking moment, when artists and audiences connect. But it’s Cube who puts N.W.A on the map with his incendiary “Fuck Tha Police.” The film’s righteous highlight is a Detroit concert where the cops threaten to jail the bandmates and shut the place down if they sing the rap that has demonized N.W.A to Middle America. and Aldis Hodge in lesser roles as DJ Yella and MC Ren, pack the vital spark of live performance. The recording sessions, featuring Neil Brown Jr. Assign any soft-pedaling to the fact that Dre and Cube, now media moguls, are among the film’s producers and that Gray directed Cube videos and his 1995 stoner comedy, Friday. Sex, drugs and the thug life figure prominently. Gary Gray, working from a script by Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff, doesn’t supply halos for his protagonists. The band didn’t invent gangsta rap, but N.W.A were sure as shit there in the delivery room, sparked by near-constant rousting from the LAPD. Dre, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, DJ Yella and MC Ren - channeled their fury into the beats of N.W.A, short for Niggaz With Attitude. That’s where five black teens - known as Dr. Straight Outta Compton is epic, baby, an explosively entertaining hip-hop biopic that raps home truths about race and police brutality as timely now (think Ferguson) as they were during the 1980s in Compton, California. But not so much that you ever want to leave its danger zone. This movie burns so hot that it’s bound to run out of steam.
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