Through the evocative lens of cinematographer Matthew Libatique, Gray illustrates the vibrancy and pain of this moment and, for the most part, does not leave out the contradictions.

| Feb 3, 2021

The film is remarkable because of how deeply it will resonate with today's audience.

| Apr 12, 2017

This is a monster film. You will walk out feeling like you have been entertained, educated and emotionally fulfilled. Eight months into the year 2015, and this is the only perfect film that has hit the theaters. This is it.

| Mar 15, 2017

The backdrop of Rodney King-era L.A and the realness and rawness of N.W.A.'s music, not to mention the passionate and heartfelt performances of the film's three young leads gives the film an undeniable power.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 12, 2016

In spite of its many formal and structural flaws, 'Straight Outta Compton' works, because it captures a moment, and positions its music at the center of that moment.

| May 27, 2016

The movie has inescapable verve, capturing why its subjects mean every bit as much as The Sex Pistols or Rolling Stones.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 1, 2016

It's far from being a full and frank account.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 3, 2015

The young cast are so convincing on stage it's easy to forget you're not watching the real thing.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 30, 2015

It's Hawkins, Mitchell and Jackson (the latter playing his own father) who really light up the screen, bringing energy and vitality to the film even as it misses the wider picture (and stirs up old rivalries) ...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 30, 2015

Straight Outta Compton is an unwieldy, expletive-strewn sprawl of a musical biopic.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 28, 2015

The NWA story is told in the style of a luxe, classic-era studio biopic. And it's scintillating.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 27, 2015

Potent and visceral in its depiction of street life and blinged-up excess alike, Straight Outta Compton delivers big beats of both kinds.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 27, 2015

Gray's camera bobs and weaves around the action like a wary boxer, giving the story an athletic urgency.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 27, 2015

The story of the rise and subsequent implosion of one of the most influential bands in US rap history gets a sweeping, epic, but somewhat partisan treatment in F Gary Gray's explosive drama Straight Outta Compton.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 27, 2015

It twists the volume dial clockwise.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 27, 2015

Early scenes show clearly how NWA's music emerged from the war zone of south central LA in the 1980s. Thereafter, Straight Outta Compton comes straight out of the school of biopic cliché.

| Aug 27, 2015

Holding it all together is clamourous music that achieves something pop so rarely manages: it is urgently of its time and endlessly influential.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 27, 2015

A group of talented young actors in a bio-pic that packs a punch in all the right places... eye-opening and compelling...

| Aug 26, 2015

The core of the story is business, the object is power, and the quirks of desire and twists of the unconscious are given no place in the struggle-which the movie sharply carries ahead to the present day.

| Aug 24, 2015

It's very easy to imagine sing-along showings cropping up for years to come.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 21, 2015