To save himself, he signs a deal with the devil: Marion “Suge” Knight, the fearsome 350-pound giant-cigar-chomping entrepreneur of Death Row Records, who enjoys a supreme distinction among the rappers and producers he employs and lords it over - he’s the only one among them who isn’t playing at being a gangsta.ĭominic L. Once he’s in prison, however, his life and career look like they’re in ruins.
“All Eyez on Me” presents the incident that resulted in rape charges that were brought against Tupac and members of his entourage (he was convicted of first-degree sexual abuse) in a way that completely exonerates him the truth may have been murkier.
TUPAC ALL EYEZ ON ME FULL MOVIE MOVIE
The movie than flashes back to his New York childhood, his jarring moves to Baltimore and Oakland, the close friendship he formed in his teens with Jada Pinkett (Kat Graham), his shot at stardom when he was asked to join Digital Underground, his 1992 role as a stone-cold sociopath in “Juice” (a role he acted brilliantly, and that was said by some to have had an influence on his off-screen behavior), and his mesmerizing early solo videos for tracks like “Same Song” (his first lead with Digital Underground) and the scabrous social-protest rap “Brenda’s Got a Baby.” But it’s only after he goes to jail that the movie finds its footing. There’s a facile framing device, with Tupac explaining (and defending) his life in a prison interview that takes place during the nine months he spent at the Clinton Correctional Facility in 1995. He turns into a badass outlaw hip-hop demigod who is playing the role of a badass outlaw hip-hop demigod. Yet each new way that he chooses to define his manhood - as a rap star as a fighter with thug-life cred who will walk, lips snarled, into any confrontation as a stud as an activist leader in the new era of rap-as-racial-politics - it becomes, for him, a highly self-conscious performance. He can see the injustice around him, and when he’s arrested in Oakland for jaywalking (when was the last time a white person got arrested for jaywalking? Answer: never), the sadism of the police is like a nightstick to the soul.
It’s no wonder that Tupac grows up to be a militant without a cause. Afeni is played by Danai Gurira (who would have been perfect as Nina Simone), and Gurira makes her a ruthlessly intelligent analyst of the white power structure who is nevertheless consumed by a rage that has no outlet (at one point, she turns to crack).
He looks astonishingly like the rap star, but Shipp also fills out Tupac emotionally, showing us the smiley high-school student who prided himself on his success in the theater - we see him cast as the lead in “Hamlet” - as well as the surly, neglected adolescent who was raised by his mother, the former Black Panther Afeni Shakur, to take a never-ending stance of defiance. That said, Demetrius Shipp Jr., who plays Tupac, carries you through. Yet “All Eyez on Me,” directed by the music-video veteran Benny Boom, is an old-school biopic that reminds you why old-school biopics faded: It has that overly sprawling, one-thing-after-another quality that can make you feel like you’re seeing the cinematic version of a Wikipedia entry. 7, 1996, that should be enough time to tell his story with intimacy and flow. The film is 2 hours and 20 minutes long, and considering that Tupac was only 25 years old when he was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas on Sept.
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