A riveting "rags-to-riches" story that turns flat out decadent

Rating: 6/10 (8 September 2015)

If you don't really think about it, Straight Outta Compton, this year's anti-action blockbuster, is the sort of movie that will completely blow you away. Its crisp direction, engaging performances, and snappy tracks seamlessly work together to pull the audience in, whether fans of N.W.A. or simply the casual viewer. This film knows how to grab and hold the audience's attention, inserting humour, drama, violence, and even undiluted emotion at such a perfect pace that makes it almost impossible to think about the movie at a critical angle, at least within the film's duration. Even the opening scene, which has no purpose other than to illustrate the violent and dangerous lives of the inhabitants of Compton is wildly intense, a pulse-pounding escape scene that I didn't see coming from a mile away. So this, in a nutshell, is what Straight Outta Compton does right: It is unexpectedly riveting, creating solid entertainment out of simple things like dialogue, soundtrack, and excellent visual direction.
However, when you think past the excellent filmmaking, Straight Outta Compton becomes rather childish and decadent, eventually losing its ability to showcase N.W.A.'s drama without resorting to silly, mobster-mentality fuelled scenes and opulent displays of wealth. It ceases to become a film about a group of young men overcoming cultural and racial struggles through music, morphing eventually into a tale about rich people who go around breaking things, beating each other up, engaging in gleeful misogyny, and getting richer. While it presented itself as a very promising "rags-to-riches" tale, the "rags" ended about a quarter of the way through, replaced by an irredeemable amount of "riches". As the film progresses, it loses its authenticity as a character drama.
The acting, however, is fantastic. Every member of N.W.A. has a distinct and charged-up personality. O'Shea Jackson Jr. plays his father Ice Cube, and it's obvious that the man knows the type of guy his dad was. Not only is his acting done with all the expected fury, his performance is deep, making him more than just a character in a story. The film mostly revolves around Eazy-E, played by Jason Mitchell. Mitchell is relied on for the emotional pinnacle of the film, and he gives it his all in a few heartrending scenes. The actors are amazing talented, but the screenplay makes the characters, and this screenplay sees it fit to make these characters into rich thugs.
The tagline for the poster reads: "The World's Most Dangerous Group". If this were to be so, I would assume that the group originally had some sort of "ruthless" political ambition. But it's hard to see that in the film. In fact, the underlying purpose of their musical ambition is kept ambiguous, never amounting to anything more than money, guns, and women. The political venom reflected in their songs never extends to their behaviour. They are unjustly treated, but by the way they carry themselves, it doesn't seem like they care. For a group called N.W.A. (and I'm assuming that the meaning of the acronym is universally known), they have surprisingly little attitude.
Although the film may be strangled by its decadence in its later stage, it has its best and most memorable moments on the streets of Compton. The director is attached to the place, and depicts it not only as a cruel place, but as a reluctant sanctuary. Gray paints a vulgar, yet beautiful canvas on these dangerous streets where life is rough, tensions run high, and dreams are no more than dreams.