You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge.

Rating: 8/10 (22 December 2018)

Though 'Straight Outta Compton (2018)' may not be one-hundred percent historically accurate (with some 'undesirable' events being omitted seemingly simply due to the people producing the piece), this extremely entertaining bio-pic cuts to the heart of its story in an impressively acute way, always feeling innately cinematic and properly engaging as it weaves together its complex characters and events into a single narrative. It does brush past, and even entirely omit, a couple of its key players in an effort to focus on the trifecta of Cube, Dre and Easy, but this is just a casualty of a more concise narrative and is, essentially, completely necessarily, if unfortunate, in order for the film to work as well as it does. The two-and-a-half hour picture flies by as it really drives home the messages found within its focal group's music (even the ones they couldn't write into their lyrics) and paints a clear picture of the time, place and general situation that lead to its creation. Plus, all of the flick's actors give near-perfect performances that aren't just imitations and actually recreate the iconic songs themselves. 8/10