Boyz n the Hood director John Singleton was initially due to direct this NWA biopic, and he may have brought a more nuanced edge to the tale of the band’s controversial cultural status. Instead, F Gary Gray (whose CV includes Friday and Set It Off) plays it rather more straight, following Corey Hawkins’s Dr Dre, Jason Mitchell’s Eazy-E, and O’Shea Jackson Jr’s Ice Cube on a pulsating rags-to-riches journey involving all the usual rock-pic elements: talismanic recording sessions, boisterous concerts, riotous parties (replete with unquestioned misogyny), corrupt managers etc. After his caricatured turn as the svengali-esque Eugene Landy in Love and Mercy, Paul Giamatti offers another wiggy performance as NWA’s manager Jerry Heller, whose contracts spark rifts between the rappers even as the authorities get federal on their act. Scenes of LA burning in the wake of the Rodney King trial provide an apocalyptic political backdrop, although the film itself seems more interested in the battles (both contractual and physical) between artists and record labels, with R Marcos Taylor’s Suge Knight providing much death row threat. But it’s Hawkins, Mitchell and Jackson (the latter playing his own father) who really light up the screen, bringing energy and vitality to the film even as it misses the wider picture (and stirs up old rivalries), aided by an urgent and enthralling powerhouse soundtrack.
