All Eyez On Me Review
There has been so much hype surrounding this movie, that we all knew All Eyez on Me had a tough uphill battle to surpass any expectations. The development process has been tumultuous at best. The family of Tupac Shakur no longer endorsed the film after a whole bunch of drama behind the scenes. The makers kicked John Singleton off the project after some “creative differences.” After witnessing this shitshow in real time, we all feared the worst for Tupac Shakur’s biopic.
1. First things first, I will be comparing this movie a bit to Straight Outta Compton, mostly because I believe that movie set the gold standard when it comes to hip hop biographical films. I was really bummed when I found out the guy(s) that played 2Pac in Straight Outta Compton wasn’t going to be the one(s) to play him in All Eyez on Me. That honor went to Demetrius Shipp Jr. The reason I was so disappointed is that I feel that a fantastic opportunity to make a Hip Hop Universe ( like Marvel or DC) was missed where rappers get their own bio flicks and how dope would it have been to see actors have recurring roles as those rappers across multiple movies? You heard it here first! If this becomes a reality down the line I expect credit and a metric shit ton of money.
2. That being said, if there’s any lesson to be learned from watching All Eyez on Me, it would be that just because you get a guy that’s the spitting image of Tupac Shakur to play Tupac Shakur in a movie doesn’t mean the movie is guaranteed to be good. Not to say the movie is bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s just...Eh. Could’ve been much better. Could’ve been much worse.
3. What struck me first and foremost was just how...impersonal the movie was. Surprisingly so for a movie centered around a single person. I believe the format and the pacing of the movie had a lot to do with how I felt. I am not a huge fan of the “I’m going to be interviewed and we’ll tell my life through 15 different flashbacks” school of storytelling. Any emotional investment being built with Tupac is interrupted and marginalized when the story constantly jumps between a flashback and the present day (the interview was held in 1995.) It breaks immersion. And immersion such an important concept in storytelling. The constant stopping and starting of the plot started to get on my nerves, especially when you learn that it’s really just to set up the next part of the movie. “You’re mother was a Black Panther?” Scene ensues. “You moved to Baltimore?” Scene ensues. “Then Cali?” Scene ensues. “Became a rapper?” Scene ensues. “Hit record?” Scene ensues. “Rape?” Scene ensues. “Got shot?” Scene ensues….. You get it. The interview itself is such a big part of the movie but does nothing more for it beyond telling what you’re about to see next. It’s a waste of time, in my opinion. Literally, any other way of storytelling would have been better. Hell, I would’ve settled for first person narration from Demetrius-Pac himself.
4. The pacing was another culprit. Scenes switch rapid fire. They change so fast it would give Guy Ritchie a boner. I understand wanting to include everything about a larger than life hip-hop legend like Tupac, but it’s not feasible or wise when you only have two hours and change to do it. It’s okay to leave things out. Each segment of Tupac’s life is there and gone so quickly that you don’t have time to really care about what’s going on in it. It really stunts the emotional impact of each segment. You feel like you’re being dragged from moment to moment without getting any breathing space to fully absorb or appreciate what’s happening.
5. SO. MANY. DIFFERENT. FACES. There are so many people crammed into this film that you would be hard pressed know or care anything about them. There’s a prevailing opinion that the acting is bad in All Eyez on Me, but I don’t think that’s true at all. There are a few really good performances, the problem is that you only see these people for a few seconds tops. No one else other than Pac gets enough appreciable screen time for you to really get to know the other characters. Danai Gurira is damn good as Afeni Shakur but the scenes with her are so brief that the relationship between Pac and his mother (a relationship so important to his life that he wrote one of his biggest songs about it) feels gutted and incomplete. You can listen to “Dear Mama” and that four and a half minute song paints a more in-depth picture of their relationship than this movie does. And that’s his most significant relationship in the film. It’s all downhill from there. I think his next most important one was his friendship with Jada Pinkett. Again, the scenes are so brief and fleeting that other than a few smiles from me here and there, it just felt rushed and undeveloped. All of Pac’s other relationships are even more undefined. His manager, Atron Gregory, seemed like a good dude. From the brief dialogue, it seems that Tron looked out for and take care of Pac. And that’s my problem. DON’T SAY IT. SHOW IT!
6. If you haven’t read Tupac’s biography or the history of Death Row records, you’re not going to know who the hell most of the people in the background are. Hip hop fans that remember the 90’s might know these people but any other generation (especially the younger generation) being introduced to Pac through this movie is going to be shit out of luck. Poor character development strikes again. Not knowing = not caring. Not caring = why the hell are they featured in this movie?
7. I really liked Jamie Hector as Mutulu Shakur. He was pretty powerful in the blink of screen time he had. As was Clifton Powell. Very good performance even though you only see him for like 20 seconds when he’s giving Pac valuable advice in prison. I would expect nothing less from a veteran actor.
8. I can’t help but compare it to Straight Outta Compton. That movie did such a great job of character development. It makes you care about the relationships of the N.W.A. Despite all the differing personalities and egos, each member got enough time for you to fully appreciate them. Compton took you through the roller coaster of emotions. You felt joy when they started getting famous. Laughter when they would roast each other with playful banter. Anger and indignity when the police treated them like shit. Triumph when Fuck Da Police played in Detroit. And profound sadness as you saw Eazy E dying of AIDS.
9. All Eyez on Me, by comparison doesn’t have a tenth of the development needed to feel for Pac and his life. The emotional tone of the movie is overall bland. Very few highs and lows. Which sucks because the are a ton of things that should generate all sorts of emotions in the viewer. If certain events in Pac’s life were given more attention than others this could have been achieved but the director’s choice to include so many things makes all the scenes suffer.
10. Suge Knight is a big part of this movie. Dominic L. Santana does an okay job portraying Suge, but I definitely prefer R. Marcos Taylor’s Suge Knight in Straight Outta Compton. Something about his eyes. Suge’s intelligence and violent psychopathy just comes through better in Taylor’s portrayal. I liked Compton Dr. Dre more than this Dre, but I wouldn’t hold that against this movie. After all, Compton was about Dre. I liked this Snoop Dogg than Compton’s Snoop Dogg. He looked much more like him and sounded so much more like Snoop. Biggie Smalls was whatever. Jamal Woolard reprises the same as he did in Notorious, but he didn’t stand out one way or another to me. Underground Digital played themselves, which was pretty cool. There was a pretty funny moment between them and Pac which kind of gave a glimpse into their relationship as well as being a much needed tension reliever. There should have been more of that. Much more.
11. I saved the man himself for last. Shipp’s performance as Tupac Shakur was decent. I don’t really have a fault with him. I think the movie itself let him down more than anything for all the reasons I mentioned earlier. Oftentimes an actor strives to make the best out of the script that’s given to them. I saw 140 minutes of Tupac Shakur on screen but I felt there were precious few times when I got to see the real grounded Pac. I felt like it was 95% Pac the persona and 5% of Pac the person. Maybe they are one and the same, but I find it hard to believe that Pac didn’t have any human moments during the last 7 years of his life. Outside of his mother and Jada Pinkett who really did ground him? Who represented stability in his life? There still had be remnants of the theater geek kid from Baltimore that could recite Shakespeare in a moment’s notice. Human moments were few and far in between. One scene that stuck out in my mind was regarding the moments leading up to his death were he turns on an R&B song in the car with Suge. Suge is annoyed by anything that’s not gangster rap but Pac’s face lights up and he geeks out over song. That’s the kind of human moment that’s in such short supply in the film. In those 10 seconds Pac is charming and relatable. He’s not the Thug Life rapper that goes 200% every second of the day. It was one of maybe three or four moments in the film that you see human Pac. The charming,intelligent, idealistic geek rather than the rap god that you see all the other times.
12. I can also give All Eyez on Me the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the rapid blur of scene changes and the horde of uninteresting and ever-changing faces were part of the director’s vision to impress upon us that the real Tupac Shakur got lost in the sea of the glitz, glamour, fakery, sex, drugs, and overall madness of the rap game of the early to mid 90’s. Maybe for the last six or seven years of his life Pac was truly alone, stuck behind a persona that led him to greatness and tragedy. It makes more sense because most of Pac’s human moments took place at the beginning of the film. If I believed this was the case I would rate this film higher, but I don’t.
I know I spent nearly the entire review pointing out things that I don’t like about this film, and you might think I hated it. I really didn’t. There were a few funny scenes. There were one or two heartfelt moments. Nothing to have me in my feelings, but enough to be like “aww that’s sad.” Despite my many criticisms of the film there was nothing to make me cringe or drive me up a wall with anger. It’s more “blase blah” than “this sucks” That’s why I can’t call this a bad film. It’s really not.
This is an average film. Not good. Not bad. Just average. You’re not going to want to see this in theaters unless you’re a gigantic Tupac or Hip Hop stan. It’s not worth the money. Wait til it comes out on Netflix or whatever. You’re not missing anything.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 Silverbacks
