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Biggie
and Tupac
review by Carrie Gorringe, 21 June 2002
28th Seattle International Film
Festival Rapper Tupac
Shakur was gunned down on September 7, 1996 in Las Vegas. Rapper
Biggie (The Notorious B.I.G.) Smalls suffered the same fate on March
9, 1997 in Los Angeles. Once the closest of friends, Biggie and
Tupac died as bitter enemies. In his latest film, Biggie and
Tupac, documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield (Kurt and
Courtney, Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam) suggests that
these murders are, despite all appearances, related incidents. He,
along with many of his interviewees, barely stop short at
proclaiming Marion (Suge) Knight to be the chief mastermind behind
both the murders and the feud between Biggie and Tupac. It seems
that Knight, the former head of the rap label Death Row records, had
the typical characteristics for committing the murders: motive and
opportunity. The movie lines up a laundry list of potential motives,
chief among them the large sum of money ($10 million) he owed Tupac
at the time when Tupac was planning -- some might have said
threatening -- to leave Death Row because of the violence
surrounding the label and his minimal financial compensation for a
punishing workload (During one eleven-month period, Tupac recorded
sixty-seven songs). Knight had also operated under a
divide-and-conquer strategy, attempting to create an "East Coast
versus West Coast" rivalry, dismissing East Coast rap labels as
inauthentic. Tupac's impending departure for an East Coast label
would have threatened that, along with Tupac's intention of taking
his entire back catalog with him. Fortunately, as the film suggests,
Knight had one last trump card to play: some of L.A.'s finest also
worked part-time as part of Death Row's security detail, providing
protection for its artists. Was it coincidence, the film asks, that
an investigation into both killings went nowhere under this
insidious set of circumstances?
This being a Nick Broomfield film,
it's not surprising that the film veers into the realm of
tantalizing implications. Operating as a cross between Albert Sayles
and Oliver Stone (much like Michael Moore), Bloomfield and his films
play at the fringes of treating its participants with neutrality,
but the outcome -- especially in this case -- tends to rest on an
uneasy line between libel and interpretation (and perhaps very
uneasily at that, since Courtney Love sought an injunction against
the release of Kurt and Courtney). The film's structure
relies very heavily upon Biggie Small's friends and family, since
Tupac's mother -- the executor of his estate and the rights holder
to all of her son's music -- refused to cooperate with Broomfield.
The interpretation of the events behind this case may be tempting to
those with a love for the paranoiac -- although Broomfield, to his
credit, doesn't shy away from presenting Knight's commanding, almost
sinister, presence -- but the speculations aren't sufficient to
present a truly persuasive viewpoint.
Seattle International Film Festival
Coverage:
Reviews:
Interviews:
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Directed
by:
Nick Broomfield
Starring:
The Notorious B.I.G.
Marion 'Suge' Knight
Tupac Shakur
Rated:
NR - Not Rated.
This film has not yet
been rated.
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