All Eyez On Me

1 of the 4 good films I've seen this year.

Director: Benny Boom
Writers: Jeremy Haft
                Eddie Gonzalez
                Steven Bagatourian
Runtime: 2hrs 19minutes

Plot: A biographical film about the life of rapper Tupac Shakur.

Finally, I got to see a good film, after the stream of shit I've gotten to see something good which is such a breath of fresh air. It's not a great film, I mean there are a few things that are a bit off and I don't mean in the "story", I know nothing of Tupac's life and the only thing I knew of his death (before seeing this) was that he was at a boxing fight that night and got shot in a car a few streets away. That was all I knew, so going into this I wanted to be a bit educated and just watch something about another human being who had a huge impact on the world. But like I said, the film itself has a few issues. I'll discuss those then I'll get back to talking about the good in this because there is a lot of good.

So the first thing that, almost took me out of the second half of the film was the framing in the first half. In the first half, Tupac is in prison due to the wrongful incarceration on charges of (I think) indecent touching and sexual assault? Correct me if I'm wrong, the film said he wasn't guilty of rape but he was guilty of something else which he got locked up for 18 months in a maximum security prison. Back to the point, he's in prison and is taking part in filming what seems to be a documentary and throughout the film, it keeps cutting from his past to talking to the guy filming and so when it gets to the point that the past catches up to the present, it makes you think that the film is almost over because, in my experience whenever a film's had a framing device like that, that's where the film ends. This felt like two films sort of sewn together, one was the filming of a documentary and looking back on Tupac's life, and the other was...a regular biopic with that important text at the end of it. Just a little confusing.

The next thing I want to talk about is just this one moment near the end of the film. Tupac got in a fight at the casino, went back up to his room, got changed, told his girlfriend he was going to the club and would be back in an hour and left. Once he left the room he stands outside the door, brooding, like a warrior who was going to war, knowing he was about to lose his life. I can 100% guarantee that is not how that moment went down, he obviously didn't know he was going to be the victim of another gun attack, he didn't know he was about to die. At the very most he was probably thinking "ah shit, might get in another scrap tonight" but he wouldn't fucking stand there like that. He'd have just left. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong if he did stand there contemplating life and death and all meaning on Earth for about 5 minutes and you back that up with some sort of evidence I'll gladly retract what I said but for now, I'm gonna say that inspirational bs didn't happen.

Finally, I want to talk about Snoop Dogg. Snoop was in the film, I know some of you who know all about Tupac and the people he was friends with are probably saying "duh you idiot, they collaborated and were friends how did you not know this you idiot" so like...one, I genuinely didn't know, I thought they would have just been separate entities in the music industry, two; I don't mean that someone was just playing Snoop Dogg in the film, I mean the guy did voice over work for the actor playing him. That's what I got the issue with. When the actor first opened his mouth, and Snoops voice came out I was blown away. This guy's the BEST impersonator, how did they swing that? Then as the film went on I just didn't feel it you know? I knew something was up and I wasn't sure. It was only on the way home that Ben said he'd noticed that at some points, the voice didn't match up with the actor's mouth so I googled it and it's dubbed. Why? Did the actor just look like a young Snoop but had such a horrid voice that he had to be dubbed? I dunno, there's just something about that that just kinda presses the wrong buttons with me.

So, onto the good. Learned a fair amount, like Shakur dated Madonna. Brave guy. He was in the Baltimore School For The Arts, I dunno why it surprised me but it did. Pretty much everything in this that wasn't the events leading up to his death was something cool that I learned.

I also loved the choice of actors, every single person cast in this looks like their real life counterparts, how do I know? I looked at side by side shots of the actors and real people. But for real, this was just so weird to look at yet you can definitely tell that whoever was in charge of casting was definitely not wanting to miscast anyone and in doing that, offend anyone.

Finally, there was no talk of conspiracy theories. No "Biggie killed Tupac" or anything like that. When Tupac was first attacked and shot, he believed Biggie to have been a part of it, and so we saw that through his eyes. There's no definite thing on who did that mentioned in the film and I think that's good, at least it portray's that in an unbiased and honest light. They could have gone down the route of showing the gunman's face for a very split second to be discovered on DVD when people look at it to overanalyse it. Hell for all I know that could be it but I don't think so.

So that's what I thought of that, everyone did a great job in making the film, except whoever decided on the framing device, that was dumb. Anyway, that's it for today. It'll be my birthday when this goes out so like, the best present would be shares and stuff on any of my posts. Up to you like. Anyway, peace out, love you's, see you tomorrow.

This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use" under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film please go and support its creators by buying tickets to go see it in cinemas / buying the DVD or Bluray when the time comes.