Straight Outta Compton in a 6-4 Impala

Rating: 8/10 (23 August 2015)

This is a landmark film that will have staying power beyond the history of rap music. In order to understand the power of this film it is essential to understand the history of the environment from which this music genre emerged. South of the City of Los Angeles is a small city of about 100,000 called Compton. A quarter of the residents live below the federal poverty line. About a third of the population is less than 18. Although demographics have changed to a latino majority recently, the African American community found available housing here after WWII. Situated near Watts and South-Central, the area has suffered the ravages of gang warfare, drugs, with internal corruption and mismanagement of the City. As the Civil Rights Movement slowly got started during the last century, voices began to speak out: James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Black Panthers, Angela Davis and Maya Angelou. In the sixties, the Black Panthers shouted out black pride. The popular music from the sixties (R&B, Motown) was never an overt statement of protest, but the message was there although veiled ("Dancing in the Streets"). Around the time of the Nixon administration, it became the mantra of politicians to "get tough on crime." The end result of this misguided and ignorant approach is today's mass incarceration of Black men and the "Black Lives Matter" movement.
With this history as a backdrop, the film begins in 1987 and explores the driving forces that pushed this artistic movement, a movement driven from the street by young men, straight out of Compton and into mainstream America.
From Compton, many rap artists emerged but among the first are N.W.A., Dr. Dre and Ice Cube. The cast give performances that stress the reality of the daily life in any community ravaged by illicit drugs, society's benign indifference regarding basic social support services and always the presence of the police. Rap and hip hop have now continued for thirty years. It is time to acknowledge this history and listen to the message very carefully. This film may be the finest production to date on this theme. The young men who created this sound in Compton and other cities speak in a coarse street language about anger, fear, humor, love, sarcasm and frustration. But there is a warning: things must change. The film is divided into short stories of the forces that caused the artists to write verses in a percussive rhythm where melodies have largely been discarded. They immediately found a following in Compton. The actors portraying the rappers made their characters very real. Paul Giamatti portrayed their first agent "Jerry" and nailed his part. Mr. Giamatti is probably the finest character actor on the screen today. Sadly, the women in the film were dehumanized and made ornamental and insignificant. The middle of the movie slowed a bit until Eazy E's story. If this had been fiction, it probably would have seemed contrived. But the fact that his death at just 31 from HIV was true, skillfully drove home the fact that life is short and temporary. The photography could have been a distraction with the hand held jiggling camera, but it worked and complemented the coarse reality of the story.
This film's release turned out to be perfectly timed. It is much more than a Saturday night date movie. It is a historical reality check. It is a cinematic chapter in the special history of the Black equality movement that is far from over. But for now, these artists spoke to America and the world, straight outta Compton in a 6-4 Impala.