Straight Outta Compton review: A fully loaded rap fairy tale of not giving a f**k

It would have been hard to make a bad film out of a story and soundtrack as vital and compelling as NWA's Straight Outta Compton, the riotous 1989 rap record that didn't so much break the charts and shape a genre as part-raze a city and throw a big, dirty spotlight on a country divided.

Stick it on now and it'll still blow away most things you've had on your stereo this year. Its anger tells its own story, visual accompaniment not necessary.

Yet against a backdrop of police brutality, culminating in the infamous LAPD beating of taxi driver Rodney King that triggered the LA riots, this self-dramatisation of the group's controversial and life-changing rise to fame and wealth, fuelling the ever-growing status of its stars Dr Dre and Ice Cube in the process, makes for an unlikely crowd-pleaser. It made $60m, more than double its budget, in its opening weekend in the US. People are up in the aisles, applauding.

It's easy to see why. Boyz n the Hood director John Singleton apparently wanted all of the "black Beatles" to star in his '90s coming-of-age-in-the-ghetto classic, but only Ice Cube took him up on it. Straight Outta Compton pretty much rights that collective oversight, with all the guns, bouncing car suspension and Crenshaw Mafia references you'd expect.

The casting of virtual lookalikes in most roles, with acting chops to boot, certainly helps the immersion - O'Shea Jackson Jr steals the show, although 'being Ice Cube's son and looking exactly like him' is a bit of a cheat. And when you shave off large chunks of the more unflattering flab from the group's history, you have a hip-hop fairy tale for the ages. Indeed, that's how it plays and if it wasn't for Eazy-E's moving, if narratively inconvenient, demise (played strongly by Jason Mitchell), this would have been an 8 Mile-like fantasy of triumphant success over adversity. There's even an ad for Beats in the closing credits.

But, of course, as a comprehensive document of events, Straight Outta Compton, like many biopics, is full of holes. Let's get the little stuff out the way, such as Eazy-E's White Sox cap not existing back then, and move swiftly into how women have been almost entirely airbrushed out of the history: those framed in their onetime misogynistic raps (the word "f**k" is said hundreds of times but "bitch" remains strangely absent); those very openly abused (Dre protegé Eminem even rapped about it); and those who helped NWA on the road to success.

What women we're left with are whining mums, whining girlfriends and naked, cheating Friday memes getting their comeuppance. The only woman to come out with any credit is Eazy's widow, Tomica, who gets his money orders sorted out, if a little too late - but then she is one of the film's producers along with Dre and Cube, who are also both portrayed as Boy Scouts bar the odd fracas with dudes who totally deserved it. History is certainly written by the victors.

Even the exploits of hip-hop kingpin Suge Knight, the Death Row Records founder with enough dirty laundry of his own to fill two movies and a couple of laundrettes on the side, have been sugar-coated and skated over - what, no Vanilla Ice window-ledge dangling? - and it's noticeable that even a total badass like rock-hard stuntman R Marcos Taylor lacks the presence of the real thing.

But since when have facts got in the way of a good story - and Straight Outta Compton is an amazing story. Adrenaline paced, action packed and sharply edited with many a dramatic ebb and flow and standout one liner, mostly from Eazy. "I am about to go f**k," he deadpans to Paul Giamatti, all unflattering tracksuits and hair as their opportunistic manager, Jerry Heller.

"They can do what they like with them," Eazy says later, as protesters stamp copies of the band's record into little pieces. "They bought the motherf**kers."

But since when have facts got in the way of a good story and Straight Outta Compton is an amazing story. Adrenaline paced, action packed and sharply edited with many a dramatic ebb and flow and standout one liner...

Giamatti doesn't have much to do other than be equal parts a scoundrel and scaredy cat – something, unsurprisingly, his real-life counterpart has issue with – but by the end it's simply a whistlestop tour of landmark moments: the infamous FBI letter warning against playing 'F**k The Police' – and the arrests that follow when the group ignore it; Snoop and Tupac making their Dre debuts; Cube writing Friday on the coolest retro Compaq you've ever seen.

Yet it's the soundtrack that somewhat inevitably makes the movie, helping to keep a two and a half hour film pacey and en point, making up in setpieces what it lacks in depth. From Eazy's Breaking Bad-like pre-credits drug-house stand-off to the moment Cube first nails 'Gangster Gangster' after sneaking on stage at Dre's cheesy DJ job, you're hooked to see what happens next.

By the time NWA are at each other's throats, and it's descended into trading beef tracks and smashing up record company foyers with baseball bats, the music and drama have become one. The result is one hell of a wild ride, however much of it actually happened.

Director: F Gary Gray; Screenwriters: Jonathan Herman, Andrea Berloff; Starring: O'Shea Jackson Jr, Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, Neil Brown Jr, Aldis Hodge; Running time: 147 mins; Certificate: 15

Matt Hill

Digital Development Director, Hearst UK
Matt was previously Editor-in-Chief of Digital Spy, where he contributed features and reviews on TV, movies, consumer technology, video games and Lego sets, won BSME Digital Editor of the Year, and led the team to numerous awards including Campaign Consumer Media Brand of the Year and PPA Digital Content Team of the Year twice.

He is now Digital Development Director across the Hearst UK portfolio, overseeing the central digital editorial teams including SEO, video, e-commerce and design, contributing to digital acceleration across all our brands, from Cosmopolitan to Good Housekeeping. 

Before joining Hearst in 2015 Matt edited Future’s consumer technology lifestyle brand T3 and the UK arm of Gawker’s tech culture website Gizmodo, and was deputy editor at ShortList, the then biggest men’s magazine in the UK, interviewing the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Lord Sugar and Sirs Ridley Scott and David Attenborough in the process.

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