All Eyez On Me

Dir: Benny Boom

2017

***

Tupac Shakur is a legend to many, a young spirit who inspired a generation but died tragically young. Before Tupac it was pretty much only rock stars who enjoyed such notoriety, in life and in death. So much of his life and career is now hearsay, those close to him will sell you anything you want to hear for the right price and the fact that many still think he’s still alive (he is totally still alive) only pushes his legendary status further. So it is something of a relief to see that, for the most part, Benny Boom’s biopic is relatively comprehensive. So a few details might be argued by those that were there, a few relationships are totally missing and the ones there weren’t quite how they appear but considering the usual confines of a feature length biopic, I think they did okay. All Eyez on Me (the title of Tupac’s forth studio album) follows Shakur from his childhood living with his strong mother Afeni Shakur, a prominent member of the Black Panther movement and his step-father Mutulu, a revolutionary constantly under surveillance by the FBI. He was an intelligent guy but he generated just as much controversy as he did praise. I think what the film got across most successfully was that although he was clearly bright, he was also very young and was thrust into the limelight at a very early age. It came after a lot of hard work and talent but fame is a funny thing – especially when millions of fans wait eagerly for whatever you’re going to say next. Due to his strong beliefs and his his family history, pretty much everything he said was scrutinised and for ever fan there was at least two other people waiting to comment on an apparent lack of conviction. It’s an age old problem, people find it hard to accept it when a rich man defends the poor man, and Tupac’s life was a little bit like that. I think the film got him right, his depiction is fair and it shows his strengths as well as his weaknesses – for everything else you just have to read between the lines. The structure works really well, with the first half of the film covering Tupac’s life up until his prison sentence told through his interviews with author/journalist/activist Kevin Powell and the second half following his life as it happens after he get released. Powell actually filed a lawsuit against the producers for copyright infringement, although the character is only referenced as ‘The interviewer’ and not him directly – although it is clearly meant to be him. For all the misgivings and inaccuracies (and fiction) there are also some great examples of attention to detail, particularly of Tupac’s last few hours. However, the weakest moments are probably of concert footage of which there are many. Benny Boom is a music video director, so it is puzzling how this is the weakest part of the movie. The real strength of the film though is in the lead performance from Demetrius Shipp Jr. He is the spitting image of Tupac but he is also a brilliant actor who clearly felt passionate about his role. I thought Grace Gibson was great as Faith Evans and I loved Chris Clarke’s take on Shock G in full Humpty Hump mode but having Jamal Woolard reprise his role as The Notorious B.I.G. was a genius move. Notorious is a great biopic, probably still better than All Eyez on Me but the merger of the two films in this way makes them both stronger in my opinion. The Snoop Dog dubbing is questionable and the jury is still out on who plays Dr. Dre the best but overall the performances are outstanding and are the reason the film works as well as it does. Who knows what super-fans thought of it, I never really got into Tupac but I loved Digital Underground and I thought it was a cleverly put together film on a tricky subject.