Beautiful movie

Rating: 10/10 (16 August 2015)

This is the most important movie of the year, in this time when race relations in this country are so strained. I am so glad that someone has finally produced a truthful movie showing the view of individuals growing up in a violent society and the challenges that each and every one of them faces. The most telling scene was that of a young Ice Cube on a bus - just a high school student writing poetry - when he is exposed to gang intimidation and violence. This was not my experience growing up in white suburbia, when I rode along in the safety of my school-bus in the mid 1980's, writing morose poetry (which I thought at the time to be rebellious, but was just an outpouring of boring adolescent melancholia as opposed to true suffering.) Rap is poetry and I truly loved the insight provided by that single scene of the sweet, observant soul of the poet becoming witness to what will inspire his verse. The rest of the movie is equally riveting in its lyricism, its acting, and its emotion.
O'Shea is brilliant in his portrayal of his father. Jason Mitchell left me speechless in the purity, sincerity and depth he brought to his role. O'Shea and Mitchell should each be nominated for Oscars.