In the mid ’80s friends O’Shea “Ice Cube” Jackson (played by his real-life son, O’Shea Jackson Jr.) and Andre “Dr Dre” Young (Corey Hawkins) are would-be musos whose big chance to break into the music business arrives when friend and local drug dealer Eric “Eazy-E” Wright (stand-out Jason Mitchell) agrees to finance their first single.
It quickly becomes a local hit, which attracts record exec Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti), who becomes partners in Eazy-E’s Ruthless Records label just as the group – N.W.A., or Niggaz With Attitude – start to work on their first, world-changing album.
Director F Gary Grey’s 150 minute look at the rise and fall of N.W.A. is produced by Cube, Dre and the widow of Easy E, so anyone expecting a warts-and-all take on their early days is bound to be disappointed here. But while the story is pretty much boilerplate biopic, Grey brings the late-’80s streets of Compton to vivid life, with scene after scene – especially early on when the action is at concerts and on the streets, rather than the mansions of the final third – that feels utterly authentic.
It helps that his core cast do a near-perfect job of re-creating their alter-egos without slipping into caricature, helping to make these watered-down versions – this Dre is always respectful to women, Cube’s association with the Nation of Islam is nothing to fear and Easy-E contracted AIDS from an excess of heterosexual intercourse – come at least some way towards the real thing.
Reviewed by Anthony Morris