There are times when films I want to (or actually) write about I find myself more in awe of a small piece of that film and what it meant to me that I forget, or (maybe more importantly) ignore, some more troubling aspects of the film and I’m starting to wonder about that whole approach to the world of film discussion.

The film with which I’m refering to today is F. Gary Gray’s Straight Outta Compton. Now while I was born in 1986 I don’t believe I actually had listened to the important rap album until possibly the late 90s. That, I have to come to terms with on a daily basis, is a relatively long time ago and some may even call me aged and wise in the world of older sounds many times, but this movie never wants itself to feel like it’s drawing on nostalgic feelings. It plays it’s world straight forward and wants you to consider it as a regular everyday biopic about these three men who came together to make something special and each went off in their own different directions.

Yesterday  I was sitting down scrolling through other reviews of this film and stumbled across Devin Faraci’s writings on the film (which you read over at BirthMoviesDeath) and I have to say I agree the most with what he had to say about the film more than anyone else that I’ve read. His summation of how the film sort of breaks apart once the Straight Outta Compton tour ends kind of makes sense. I enjoyed a lot of the silly cameos and actors playing on 90s rappers that I listened to playing out tracks that I loved as a young teen worked on me, but at the same time it’s nowhere near as powerful as watching Eazy-E, Dr. Dre and Ice Cube lifting middle fingers to the Detroit police department along with the entire crowd watching on and participating.

If there’s one thing that this film has going for it is how relevant the story is to modern day America, and this is something that is brutally obvious. In the light of all the “Black Lives Matter” world of America right now this film stands a top of it all reminding everyone that not much has changed since then. We’re reminded of the Rodney King incident and how the police were given not guilty decisions on their criminal charges in the incident while we watch as our protagonists jump up and down going “at least they were caught on tape this time” as if to say “How can they ignore it now”. We also see images of Malcolm X in the background of the film a lot and it makes us think of how many must’ve wanted to respond to these circumstances. This is also why the second half of this movie stops being so resonant. We move away from this discussion of how these youngsters came to these thoughts and feelings and fighting for their right to say “Fuck the Police” and show the truth of their world to a world of billionaires talking about money and image success. Which while is okay (and I’m sure we’ll see that in Jobs later this year) it feels strange after the film leans into this discussion so hard in the first half.

So, back to my initial point, the problem with loving one aspect so much you forget to judge the rest of the show. When we hit the back half of the movie and it boils down to money and battle raps — which while I was in high school I would think was the funnest thing ever, today I’ve realized (many times) that high school me was a dumb moron — it just kind of meanders. At the same time however, I found myself riding the high of the music, from Ice Cube’s first diss track to Eazy-E and Jerry Heller to Snoop Dogg ad-libbing Nuthin but a ‘G’ Thang to hearing Dre play California Love for Tupac (which I swear I watched the video at least a hundred times on MTV), such that I sort of didn’t drop myself into that deep state of hatred that I tend to do with movies that fall into the same trap that this movie does, that being where the film feels it’s self importance take me into areas that don’t serve the original point of the narrative, that is N.W.A. in this case.