notorious..

Checked out the highly anticipated Biggie Smalls drama doc, Notorious. The film follows his life from an a child at 8 years of age all the way to his untimely death. His short life saw lots of tragedy and tons of success. They covered some stuff that the casual Biggie fan would know to some trivial antidotes that some might not know. However, the course of the movie saw one thing. As much as Christoper Wallace wanted to leave the streets to make a better life for himself, his children and his women, the street hoodlum always seemed to poke his ugly head out and get him into trouble. Deep down, Biggie was a good man but couldn't seem to do what was right because he was trapped into the wrong and when he wasn't he always seemed to get into trouble for it, anyway. It wasn't until the days nearing his death when he was trying to fix everything. Make up with his mother, start a better relationship with is children, get back together with is one true love and apologize to the other women and of course drop another album.


Walking into this movie, I knew it wouldn't be a very honest portrayal due to the guys who were producing the bio-flick. Puff and Ms. Wallace do a good job making some parts of the movie (such as the whole East Coast vs West Coast feud) very clean cut. I'm sure there's more to the story that was told. The movie also portrays Puff as being an angel which I highly doubt was totally correct. However, Derek Luke who plays the record producer steals the show in whichever scene he's in. Ditto goes for Anthony Mackie who plays Tupac Shakur. Rookie Jamal Woolard had a lot of presence playing the oversized emcee but sometimes didn't have enough charisma to play Biggie properly.


All in all, this wasn't as good as I expected it to be however, it was better that I thought it would be knowing that Puff was behind it. He could've made it much worse - like two hours of just feeding his ego and pocket book. It's not as good as any other Hip Hop bioflick, but it's worth the watch if you're a fan. The soundtrack does an excellent job at rekindling the first time you heard some of Biggie's early hits.Overall good acting, but I think the storyline could've been done better with more truth behind it.

If you're a fan of Biggie, watch it to relive it and celebrate his life. If you're just a movie fan, wait for the DVD.