For those who don’t know “All Eyez On Me” is the first theater released biopic on hip-hop icon Tupac Shakur. I got to see it on its release date which would’ve actually been Tupac’s 46th birthday. Before I go on with my review I would like to say that this is my opinion and that we all enjoy different things. I am simply talking about my experience and if it is a well-made movie. If history has taught me anything a movie doesn’t necessarily even have to be good to be enjoyed, for example with “The Room” or “The Happening”. But with a disclaimer like that you know I'm not going to be to positive here.
So how is “All Eyez On Me”? Not good if you ask me. It’s a movie that actually felt quite amateur to me at times. Most of the performances are bland and unconvincing. The editing is awkward and less than stellar throughout the movie and the whole story of Tupac in the end does not come out feeling nearly as meaningful or big as it really is.
Tupac was more than just a great rapper. He was a voice for his people, those who had to live and deal with systematic oppression, violence, drugs in their own community. Despite all this Tupac rose to prominence and was known not only as talented but an extremely deep and intellectual man. However, you never really get this feeling from the film.
I believe the biggest thing that holds this film back is its script. A lot of the dialogue in the film is really boring and often is either useless or illogical. The best example is shown somewhere within ten minutes in the film where a young Tupac’s mother describes his stepfather as a revolutionary and young Tupac retorts “I'm going to be a revolutionary” in such cringe-like manner that it made me face palm in the theater.
The script doesn’t help much of the other performances in the movie either as everyone except for maybe Danai Gurira, who plays Afeni Shakur. The best scenes often included her with Demetrius Shipp, who plays Tupac. Shipp as Tupac is okay but still not completely convincing. You can tell he is trying but just doesn’t have much to work with. Everyone else is below average at best even Jamal Woolard who returned as Biggie Smalls from “Notorious” in this film but for some reason he seems to have no care or conviction in his words or his mannerisms. It’s as if he knew the movie wasn’t any good so he didn’t try.
For whatever reason director Benny Boom did not dive into the deeper nature of Tupac. Rather the film really just seems to show us several events throughout Pac’s life but never actually says anything about them and how they affected Tupac, the man. The whole movie feels like something you could’ve just read off of Wikipedia. While his music is in there and it is amazing you actually don’t even get to see an actual showing of Tupac and his talent till about maybe an hour into the movie. While the movie does cover many events once those events happen the movie treats it as if it was nothing and almost never happened.
One thing that surprised me with this film is the editing. I felt like I knew college freshman who could’ve done better editing. This also surprised me because later I found out the editing was led by Joel Cox who has worked with Clint Eastwood on 30 different films and edited films like “Prisoners”. Most of the awkward editing is done in the first half of the film where we are transitioning back between Tupac’s early life and him being interviewed from jail. But the transitions are often done in an awkward way and furthermore this whole interview is useless. We don’t learn anything or nothing changes from it, quite frankly it would have been much better if Tupac’s story was just told chronically straight through in Pac’s eyes.
Finally the ending of the film is insulting and is actually a sign of what are the problems with this film. We do see Tupac’s murder but right after that the film goes to subtitles, a short real interview of Tupac and then credits. Despite this being one of the biggest icons of music of all time we don’t get to see any reaction of the people or his family or what he really meant to society. While the ending does show a short bit of a real interview it only reminded me more of the Tupac we didn’t get to see in the film.
Is there some enjoyment in this film? Sure, with this subject matter it’s hard for there not to be. But “All Eyez On Me” does nothing that we haven’t seen before and if you want to listen to Tupac’s music or see him perform its something you can easily do for free at home. This is one that is much better off just waiting until it is at Redbox or on Netlfix.
