Notorious

For those who don't know, Notorious, is the newly released biopic to the greatest rapper of all time, The Notorious B.I.G. it was released in theaters on January 16th, 2009, this last Friday. The movie itself received mostly favorable reviews from the critics and generally good to great reviews from common viewers. The movie runs just under two hours long, a definite choice for fans, haters, and people who don't even know who Biggie even was.

I personally feel the movie really captured the important events in Biggie's life. His albums release, his feud with Tupac Shakur, and his relationships with various women. His life was quite short; but in the mere 24 years that he lived, he rose from the lowly bottoms of Brooklyn to the Gucci wearing, champagne sipping tycoon that he was just before his death. Notorious does an outstanding job of making its viewers feel the emotions that Biggie was going through at various times in his life. The man who starred as Biggie himself, Jamal Woolard, was very well chosen. More than once, I found myself thinking that I was looking at the REAL Biggie Smalls, not an entirely different person. Woolard is extremely skilled at capturing certain qualities and characteristics that Biggie was known for, such as his deep, husky voice, his elitist, "I'm the king of the world" look that defined Biggie in his later years, everything, this was my biggest concern going into this movie, and I was very pleasantly surprised.

Even all of the supporting actors did excellent jobs in capturing the identities of the characters they portrayed. Anthony Mackie (Tupac Shakur) definitely takes the cake for this one though. When I first heard that it was going to be Mackie that took the role of Tupac, I was quite disappointed, I thought the director was going to scrutinize the entire country until he found some unknown, underground Tupac lookalike that was just waiting for a role like this. I honestly couldn't find ANY connections between the real Shakur, and the actor. But, when I first saw Mackie on the big screen, for a second, I thought that they were actually just playing a video of a real event, with the real Tupac, much like how many parts of the funeral were real, taped events. But after much, much, extraneous scrutiny, I realized that I was actually looking at Anthony Mackie. He was also able to portray that "I don't give a &^$#" personality that Tupac had really, really well.

The actual movie had very few flaws in it, all of the events were accurate, there wasn't any added fluff or anything, these events are all pretty much exactly how they took place. While I wasn't exactly ever there for any of these events, I am quite knowledgeable on what happened through various sources including interviews with the actual people. I didn't think that they portrayed anyone unfairly, unlike what Lil' Kim had to say. In an interview, she stated that she felt that she was being unfairly and inaccurately portrayed in this film. The claims that she wasn't quite as... dirty as she looked in the movie. I can understand that she might be holding on to some bitter memories of her with Biggie, but he portrayal was far from "inaccurate."

I would personally recommend this movie to anyone and everyone, so long as they are over the age of seventeen. There are some scenes in this film that many parents would consider inappropriate for their kids to watch, so consider this fair warning. But with that aside, like I've stated before, fans of Biggie Smalls, haters of Biggie, and people who have never even heard of him are all encouraged to watch this movie. It really clears up a lot of fog that used to surround Biggie's life, a lot of people think he's just another rapper, same as anyone else, but they are overlooking a lot of events that made this man into what he was, inside and outside of the studio.