All Eyez on Me
2 stars
Director: Benny Boom
Stars: Demetrius Shipp Jr, Danai Gurira, Kat Graham
Duration: 139 mins
Class: 15
KRS Releasing Ltd
Hot on the heels of last year’s critical and commercial hit Straight Outta Compton, which charted the successes and failures of gangsta rap group N.W.A., comes All Eyez on Me, a biopic of rapper Tupac Shakur (Demetrius Shipp Jr), who was shot dead aged 25 in 1996.
I will confess that I’m not a connoisseur of Shakur’s music or world yet and by the end of the film I was none the wiser about his life as a man or an artist. The film follows a classic narrative told mainly in flashback as Shakur is interviewed during a brief stint in jail. And so we are introduced to his childhood and exposure to police brutality when FBI agents raid his house, subjecting his activist mother to unnecessary violence.
His teen years are spent at a school of the performing arts and in friendship with a young Jada Pinkett (Kat Graham); we see his introduction to the word of rap and his first albums; his successes, his relationship with Death Row Records mogul Suge Knight (Dominic Santana) and artist-producer Dr Dre (Harold House Moore) in Los Angeles, while setting up rivalries that led to him being shot at, severely injured, imprisoned and ultimately killed.
Offers little depth and insight
However, it’s a by-the-numbers approach that offers little depth or insight into the legend. We are never shown what goes through his young mind as his mum rages against the violence rained on her by the police. His escape in the world of performing arts and love of Shakespeare is barely touched upon. The film just motors on from scene to scene, introducing new people in his life before moving on to the next stage, and allowing the viewer little time to take it all in or to understand what made this man tick.
Shipp Jr bears a striking physical resemblance to Shakur, and does a credible enough job as the character segues from wide-eyed, theatre-loving young boy to hardened teen and to rich, successful, bling-covered superstar.
But the script by Jeremy Haft, Eddie Gonzalez and Steven Bagatourian gives him little meat to chew on and it’s hard to feel anything for him really, even as the film tries to depict him as a good man fighting the injustices he experiences. I suspect details of the sexual assault charges that landed him in jail were glossed over, while attempts at depicting his romantic side as he woos producer Quincy Jones’ daughter do little to add any meat to the story.
The most powerful performance in the movie comes from Danai Gurira, who plays Tupac’s mother, a former member of the Black Panther movement, in whose intelligent and galvanising performance we witness the outrage of a member of an often-victimised minority and the fierce love of a mother. She appears in a couple of brief but intense scenes.
Had the rest of the movie’s characters been given the same depth and intensity, the film would have been so much better.