In the greater mythology of hip-hop, there are few events
that serve as true turning points for the culture as much as the untimely death
of Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur. Partly because of how publicised their
living beef was, partly because their deaths made for an argument to turn
mainstream hip-hop down a more peaceful direction (Will Smith breaking out on
his solo career in the wake of that is no coincidence), and partly because it
embodies the inner workings of myth in that we’re still not entirely sure what
really happened. They were both gunned down within a short amount of time of
each other, and it remains one of the greater unsolved mysteries of the
culture, up there with the anxious waiting for Detox to drop before Dr. Dre
stopped edging his audience and admitted it wouldn't happen.
This film, based on a true crime book written by journalist Randall Sullivan, sets out to dramatise these events and suggest a possible culprit or culprits. It’s basically an attempt to pull a David Fincher’s Zodiac with the pieces of the case, and it ends up becoming far bigger than the mere deaths of two of hip-hop’s biggest names, involving dirty cops, Rodney King, OJ Simpson, Blood/Crip gang rivalries, and everyone’s favourite villain Suge Knight.
It’s a lot to unpack, and unfortunately, we don’t have someone like James Vanderbilt at the pen to arrange the details in a workable fashion. To that point, this marks Christian Contreras’ first feature-length script and it most definitely shows here. While some of that can be excused in how a story like this was always going to cover a lot of territory, as do most that involve systemic corruption, he struggles with presenting all those bits of info in a way that can be easily digested by the audience.
The visual presentation is pretty drab too. I get the feeling this would make for a good drinking game just with the inconsistencies in Johnny Depp’s hair (and no, the constant flashing-back-and-forward don’t manage to excuse that), and while Monika Lenczewska’s cinematography is mostly serviceable, her attempts at handheld one-takes are rather headache-inducing. It doesn’t help that the initial introduction to both Biggie and Tupac in-story is done with a cheesy TV news expose that looks and sounds like it escaped an installment of Beef, an aesthetic that the film never manages to get out of the shadow of. It being part of the Jamal Woolard Cinematic Universe only adds to that chintzy-ness.
I can’t really speak to the accuracy of basically any of the connections made regarding who was really responsible for the death of Tupac and Biggie, and the film never goes much further than saying ‘it’s complicated’ as an answer to that, but purely as dramatisation, this is pretty lacklustre. The acting is solid enough with Johnny Depp and Forest Whitaker, there’s a couple of noisy and glitchy remixes in the soundtrack that I liked quite a bit, and it at least got me thinking about the larger implications of two murder cases this high-profile still being unsolved.
But none of that really makes up for the piled-on narrative progression, the lopsided depiction of the murder cases themselves (Biggie gets far more screen-time than Tupac), and how by film’s end, it makes less definitive statements and less impact than a single Chris Rock stand-up routine about the same topic. I get that something that inches this close to Charlie-Day-in-Always-Sunny conspiracy territory likely couldn’t get away with being too declarative… but if Zodiac could connect the speculative dots and present a compelling case, I do not see why this film couldn’t do the same.
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