Falls into "biopic" tropes with stunningly bad story structure after a good first hour

Rating: 5/10 (24 January 2016)

Straight Outta Compton... Boy, was I mad hyped up for this movie. Like... really, really excited. Alas, the hype died slowly over the trickle of two hours.
First off... Who is the protagonist of this movie? Ensemble mosaics like Short Cuts and Magnolia have more clear through lines for multiple characters. The biggest problem with Straight Outta Compton is not that it is the story of a group, but rather that it hits the pitfalls that so many biopics do. It tries to cram too much. (Thus is the overwhelming genius of the "Steve Jobs" screenplay to avoid this cliché and walk down broken-structure lane)... It begins with Eazy-E as the protagonist, flows into clearly being Ice Cube's story, then loses the thread of Cube, goes hard on Dre during the Death Row years, and then somehow swings back around to Eazy-E's death as the climax of the film. It's verrrryyyy structurally sketchy, and makes it a bit of a bore in the final half as it tries desperately to cram in Suge Knight, Snoop Dog, Tupac, Bone Thugs, Ice Cube's movie career, Eazy-E's AIDS, The L.A. riots, Dr. Dre's police chase that doesn't have a resolution or consequence (?), and a bunch of pool parties. Honestly... Straight Outta Compton's second half walks harder than WALK HARD.
Now... let's talk about what Straight Outta Compton got very very right... The F**k The Police sequence... from when the boys get unjustly assaulted by the cops, through the Detroit show- that was one of the more electrifying 20 minutes of filmmaking I have seen this year. Honestly... masterful. The performances all around were good. Ice Cube's son does a great Ice Cube! Who figured? Anyway... There was a tragic mis-use of one of my favorite unheralded actors, Aldis Hodge (Ray Voodoo Tatum)... but then again... who wants the story of MC Ren? So I get it. All around though- the acting is very solid, and the first half of the movie had me buying into the hype hard. Really exciting. But, oh, that second half...
Finally... I was let down by the casting and performance of the gentleman playing Suge Knight. Not at one moment did I feel any sense of real danger from that actor. That performance was helped along by the legend of Suge, but as for the actual portrayal in the film... Soft. Too soft.
PS. How was Tupac recording Hail Mary in like... 1992?