STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON

STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON is a well-acted, well-directed but highly selective biopic that takes many of us down a path of music nostalgia and puts west coast gangsta rap back in its context of the Rodney King riots and law enforcement outrage.  Produced by Ice Cube and Dr Dre, the movie ungenerously foregrounds their contributions to the iconic rap group NWA at the expense of Arabian Prince and MC Ren.  Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell) is portrayed as a kind of musical genius but one soon brought under the sway of evil white businessman Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti) who has understandably sued the film's producers for his unflattering portrayal as a scheming dishonest money man eager to cut Ice Cube out of the action. As for Cube, he's played by the rappers own son O'Shea Jackson Jr who as well as looking the part brings so much energy and conviction to the part he steals the movie.  In a sense, this becomes his movie, as he realises he's being stiffed out of royalties, leaves the group, records his own diss record and achieves success.  Meanwhile, Dr Dre (Corey Hawkins) almost blends into the background in a role so manicured as to become bland. He becomes the dutiful son and the voice of conscience trying to get Eazy-E to see what Heller's doing.  It's okay for Apple to say Dre's sorry for his abuse of women during this period but it's also profoundly dishonest not to show it. Still, the basic underlying misogyny can't be totally airbrushed out of the film. Women exist as groupies, light-skinned and pretty if in the foreground.   When the band's about to reconcile, Eazy-E tragically dies of HIV, and the movie goes all syrupy. But there are no deathbed tears for the women he infected. 

LAW ABIDING CITIZEN - tricksy but disposable

F Gary Gray, director of BE COOL and that godawful remake of THE ITALIAN JOB, returns to our screens after a four year hiatus with a perfectly entertaining but utterly disposable thriller. Gerard Butler stars as an apparently normal guy turned vigilante, taking revenge on a legal system that has failed his brutally murdered wife and child. I am forever amazed by Butler's ability to sustain moderate success in Hollywood despite his inability to pull off an American accent. Luckily, he's given back up by Jamie Foxx as the prosecuting attorney who agreed to the plea; Bruce McGill as the DA; and Viola Davis as perhaps the most impeccably dressed Mayor ever to appear on a movie screen. What sells the film are the sleek visuals; beautiful photography of Philadelphia's City Hall; the genuine chemistry between Butler and Foxx; and the rather satisfyingly tricksy mechanics of how the crimes have been pulled off. To my mind, the cool tricks offset the fact that we are being sold a "good guy goes psycho" movie in the first half of the film, but in fact, Butler's character was never an ordinary guy. Looking at the negatives, the least said about final five minutes - not to mention the movie's piss-poor attempt to examine the issues of doing right versus criminal justice, and the balance between civil liberty and national security - the better.

LAW ABIDING CITIZEN is on release in the US, Canada, Greece, Denmark, the Philippines, Israel, Russia, Brazil, Norway, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hong Kong, Ukraine and the UK. It opens next weekend in Hungary and Romania and on December 10th in the Netherlands, South Korea and Finland. It opens on January 28th in Australia.