Who shot Tupac Shakur? For a generation of hip-hop fans, this question has loomed large since the rapper’s murder in 1996, when he was just 25 years old. Music video director and frequent Nicki Minaj collaborator Benny Boom’s bloated biopic isn’t interested in solving the mystery of Shakur’s death, trying instead to build a comprehensive picture of his life. Yet, for its two-hour, 20-minute run time, it feels somehow both rushed and stretched. Racing chronologically through Shakur’s childhood in New York and teen years in Baltimore and Oakland, before charting his rise under the supervision of Death Row Records mogul Marion “Suge” Knight (Dominic L Santana), it never really settles into a groove.
Demetrius Shipp Jr bears an uncanny resemblance to Shakur but doesn’t quite possess the star quality to outshine the script, which is leaden and flatly expositional. Boom relies on a frame narrative that takes place as a series of over-explained on-camera interviews at the Clinton Correctional Facility in 1995, where Shakur spent nine months serving time for a sexual assault case which the film takes great pains to exonerate him from. The son of former Black Panther Afeni Shakur (Danai Gurira), Shakur was arrogant, sensitive, sharply eloquent and deeply political – so it’s surprising to see this 20-years-in-the-making story told so trashily. Cheap costuming and comic book-style colours that pop off the screen give the whole endeavour a made-for-TV feel. As a movie, it fails; but those interested in rap mythology should see it anyway.
