All Eyez on Me

Year: 2017
Genre: Biography
Directed: Benny Boom
Stars: Demetrius Shipp Jr., Danai Gurira, Kat Graham, Hill Harper, Annie Ilonzeh, Lauren Cohan, Keith Robinson, Jamal Woolard, Dominic L. Santana, Cory Hardrict, Jamie Hector, Cairo Moor
Production: Morgan Creek Productions

All Eyez on Me, the long-awaited biography of famous rapper and actor Tupac Shakur flirts with greatness once or twice. The dynamism of Shakur's music, combined with his unique place among generations of civil rights struggles, makes a movie about his life easy pickings for ambitious filmmakers looking to make the next Tommy (1975). With the success of Straight Outta Compton (2015), seeing All Eyez on Me felt all the more immediate, as it would presumably light the fire in the bellies of long entrenched rap fans while reminding white people, "hey rap was kind of a big deal back the day - who knew?"

Digital Underground is my jam!

Unfortunately despite positioning itself as the next great music biopic; complete with an actor, Demetrius Shipp Jr., who is the spitting image of Shakur, All Eyez on Me just isn't very good. In fact, it's dead in the water, relying almost solely on its soundtrack to deliver more or less what the filmmakers think casual fans would want. That is to say a cliffnoted version of a life that's one part hagiography to two parts highlight reel. At times the movie actively fights the life and times of Tupac Shakur to stage and maintain the tight sizzle of a feature length trailer.  The results are often mystifying.

The sole highlight right here...

The film proper begins with a downtrodden Shakur (Shipp) retelling his upbringing while wallowing in Clinton County prison for rape charges. We cut back and forth between his 11-year-old self (Moor), his teenage years in Baltimore and Los Angeles respectively, and an interview with an unnamed reporter (Harper). The reporter acts as both a confessional and a conscience for the beleaguered rapper as he calls his career. He also highlights the most important people in his world Afeni (Gurira), his mother and an outspoken Black Panther and Jada Pinkett (Graham) his high school crush. After he's released from prison we also are introduced to Kidada Jones (Ilonzeh) his eventual fiancee.

The relationship between Shakur and these strong women, provides the backbone for the movie. It's a backbone that stresses uneasily amidst Benny Boom's incredulous mis en scene but it never truly breaks. That said, the film's flashier moments often overwhelm what one can assume is its unifying message. Afeni's perilous addiction to crack cocaine is treated clumsily and that is despite her towering performance. Kinada's burgeoning love for Tupac often feels like they're skimming through Shakespeare sonnets rather than telling us how they truly felt about each other. And despite knowing Jada Pinkett eventually came into her own as a famous actress, her appearances always come out of nowhere and leaves no impact at all.

What does leave an impact is the film's scattershot execution. For a movie about rapping, All Eyez on Me has a surprising lack of flow. Each scene collides into the previous, strongly advocating a point-of-view, whether it be "using your platform responsibly," "turning the other cheek," "to thine own self be true," "having a complicated relationship with women," "Telling the truth of the streets," "there's danger in success" etc. By the way, those aren't just cliches, they're are actual quotes from the movie though they may as well been title cards given their level of obviousness. There's not one consistent theme here, there are dozens.

And it all never coalesces into a central point or theme. Instead the film let's each moment shout at you until all your get is a vague inkling of Tupac's real impact. An impact that you just can't grasp while Shipp gesticulates with false swagger and zero charm. I say if you're going to watch this film at all, watch it to compare whether Dominic L. Santana, Sean Ringgold of Notorious (2009) or R. Marcos Taylor in Straight Outta Compton did a better job playing Death Row music executive and sociopath Suge Knight. Otherwise I say skip it.

Final Grade: D-