“Straight Outta Compton,” the new biopic about the seminal South Central Los Angeles rap group N.W.A that comes out in theaters on August 14, is, at 142 minutes, almost as long as the group’s career. But this is only one, and probably the least, of the film’s problems. A biopic of this nature, covering a number of years, is understandably scattered. There is a necessity to cut corners and skim over details, to make connections that might not be present in real life. This is the nature of constructing a narrative.But what the filmmakers chose to include and what they decided to leave behind is, when not infuriating, simply boring. This is not the counter-narrative the story deserves. “Straight Outta Compton” traces the popular myth when it had the chance to draw a new and more interesting portrait of a group of young kids both exploiting and being exploited by a market hungry for controversy.What is that myth, you ask? It goes a little something like this: In 1986, Andre Young, an up-and-coming but disappointed member of the regionally popular mobile DJ unit World Class Wreckin’ Cru, convinces Eric Wright, a neighborhood acquaintance who partakes in more dangerous ways of making money, to help fund a rap label. When he abides, the two men — later to be known as Dr. Dre and Eazy-E, respectively — bring in their friend O’Shea Jackson, later known as Ice Cube, who has been fiendishly scribbling rhymes in a notebook on the school bus. Antoine Carraby, a fellow DJ and friend of Dre, along with Lorenzo Patterson — soon to be referred to as DJ Yella and MC Ren — round off the tight group.The best parts of “Straight Outta Compton,” the film, are these early moments in the group’s history. The young cast director F. Gary Grey has assembled — Jason Mitchell as Eazy; Corey Hawkins as Dre; O’Shea Jackson, Jr. playing his actual father, Cube; Aldis Hodge as Ren; Neil Brown, Jr. as Yella — are all compelling in their own way and enthusiastically approach the material. But when they are forced to trudge through a slapped together narrative, there’s only so much they can do. In Los Angeles in the 1980s, not many people were doing “reality rap.” The World Class Wreckin’ Cru and other groups were still spinning synthesized funk for the masses, with Ice-T the only other notable name from California breaking away from party rhymes. It existed on the East Coast, but was more politically minded. The teenagers that comprised N.W.A thought of themselves as social observers, not critics. They were not there to offer solutions to problems. Their music was a reminder that the problems existed in the first place.The result was their first album, “Straight Outta Compton,” which featured the title song and, even more notably, “Fuck the Police,” an antagonizing and necessary anthem. The song spoke of the tension that had been brewing for decades in Compton, which had been on a sharp decline for just as long. White flight, according to the urban theorist Mike Davis in his book “Dead Cities,” left “abandoned almost two thousand homes and stripped the city of most of its retail capital.” The only thing that was growing, even flourishing, during this same period was the police force that patrolled the streets. According to Davis, between the years of 1985 and 1990, right when N.W.A was born, “the police budget increased by a staggering 195 percent while funding for parks and recreation collapsed (minus 97 percent).”But N.W.A’s message was muted. The first, and most recognizable reason in the film is Jerry Heller (played with hilarious bombast by Paul Giamatti), the white record executive who, along with Eazy-E, started Ruthless Records, the label that put out N.W.A’s records. His business practices became suspect as the members of the group who were doing the bulk of the work saw their popularity rising but barely had enough cash in their pocket for a trip to Fat Burger. As the group pushed buttons with their lyrical content and learned how to attract an audience, they were being sold as a novelty act — making “statements,” not “music.” Problems over money and creative control ultimately splintered the group, leaving their two most prominent members to forge solo careers that far surpassed what came before.The film continues past this point, following Dre and Cube through further success and Eazy-E into tragedy. And it’s the latter’s story — and the performance by Mitchell, easily the best in the film — that is the most emotional and highlights an important aspect about N.W.A that is often not remembered: for all their bluster and bravado, this was, for the most part, a group of teenagers. You can fault the film for not taking them to task for the blatant sexism that stood side-by-side their social observations, but in hindsight, when you realize that these were young men being encouraged to push the limit, their innocence begins to show. This doesn’t mean “Straight Outta Compton” shouldn’t be criticized for omitting an incident like Dr. Dre beating up a woman, widely reported at the time. If anything, ignoring the unattractive sides of these people makes their story less human, less real. Everybody has a bad side.But what we get in “Straight Outta Compton” is the story of heroes, not humans. There are about three excellent movies in here — I could have watched Matthew Libatique’s beautiful tracking shots through the city streets all day — but when they are all condensed and smashed together, we’re left with a diminished whole. More focus, and more criticism, is needed to make “Straight Outta Compton” a film worthy of the talent it includes.
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