Dir. George Tillman Jr., US, 2009, 122 mins
Cast: Angela Bassett, Derek Luke, Jamal Woolard, Anthony Mackie, Antonique Smith
Review by Matthew Rodgers
March 9 1997. Returning to the West Coast a mere six months after the geographical rap-wars culminated in the slaying of Tupac Shakur, Christopher Wallace was promoting his critically acclaimed and highly prophetic second album, Life After Death. Upon leaving The Soul Train Awards with his security-heavy entourage at approximately 12.30am, the serial philanderer and unquestionably genius rapper more familiarly known as The Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls was shot four times in the chest.
With ten years of conspiracy theories, a steady trickle of unreleased material, and the official closure of the murder case in March 2005, enough time has passed to present a thorough documentation of a flawed man with extraordinary talent, and what led to his untimely demise. Well, keep waiting because this isn't it. It's more a by-the-book made for MTV movie that refuses to scratch beneath the surface of the flashbulbs and bling and merely presents an extremely linear version of a complex story.
Charting his rise from be-speckled youth (played by Wallace's real son, Christopher Jordan Wallace) to portly poet (Jamal Woolard), this lightweight biopic incorporates a lot of familiar names — P-Diddy, Puff Daddy, Puffy or whatever he calls himself this week (Derek Luke — Lions for Lambs), Faith Evans (Antonique Smith), Tupac Shakur (Anthony Mackie) — without ever really examining them as rounded characters.
Puffy is a fur coat wearing money man. His role in the proceedings here is that of a simple catalyst, a mere narrative device used to justify and explain Biggie's career progression, which incidentally is depicted as a rather easy road to stardom. His stay in prison is a montage with less menace than the opening credits of Prisoner Cell Block H and there is little or no mention of Puffy's role in the fall-outs and repercussions. Mackie as Tupac is fine, but is merely a pantomime bad guy, whose motivations for hatred are barely touched upon.
Flaws such as this are almost certainly down to the fact that the project is too personal to be controversial. Biggie's mother Voletta Wallace, played here by Angela Bassett, has an executive producer credit and has campaigned tirelessly for the movie. The end result is that Notorious is seen through the soft-focus eyes of someone that loved him. Because of that the East Coast/West Coast rivalry is reduced to cat-calling and Wallace is painted as a rather more saintly figure than truth dictates.
And what of the music? For director Tillman it's a major achievement to make something as contentious and potentially inspirational as this life story so damn dull, so to waste completely the music is criminal. Not because the soundtrack doesn't do justice to an incredible rapper, but because he exhausts Biggie's lyrical spits by saturating your eardrums. There is no build up to the “big performance”, in that same way that the fictional 8 Mile expertly slow dripped the audience towards the rap-battles. This means that when the exceptional Woolard takes to the stage to embody the late rapper, no hairs stand on end. It simply feels like you have been watching MTV Base for two hours dedicated to one artist.
So it's little more than one BIG montage and a missed opportunity at that. Those infamous Los Angeles nights of tragedy are reduced to ten minutes of rushed shaky-cam. If you want an education, then listen to Ready to Die . If you want cinematic intrigue, then check out Nick Broomfield's Biggie and Tupac documentary. This film is only for the hardcore base of fans, of which there will be many, but most of them will leave disappointed, because they will already know more than this is telling them. Notorious fails to Hypnotize on any level. |
