BIGGIE AND TUPAC (Nick Broomfield, 2002) R

Reviewed: October 7th, 2002

Nick Broomfield (Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam, Kurt & Courtney) reminds me of his fellow documentarian Michael Moore. Both take an extremely proactive plan of attack, putting themselves in most shots, the central/active participant who goes where they're not supposed to and instigates those who don't wanna talk to them. They're both unassuming in appearance: Moore, overweight and always wearing a baseball cap; Broomfield, pasty, t-shirted and British (think a handsomer Oliver Stone). And they're both fearless (the extraordinarily tense Biggie and Tupac sequence with Broomfield in prison -- in which even Broomfield's own cameraman abandons him -- will convince you of this, if nothing else). But their goals differ: Moore is more directly concerned with provocation, and thereafter, dialogue by way of this provocation. Broomfield just wants the truth. He wants to solve his mysteries (in this case, who is responsible for the murders of musicians Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls), and his scope is manageable enough that -- unlike Moore, who tackles such broad issues as employment and the root of American violence -- he might actually be able to. Biggie and Tupac is a crucial piece of investigative journalism that demands to be seen by as large a body of people as possible.

Don't worry if you don't give a flying fuck about rap, hip-hop or that whole musical culture. I don't either, and as far as I can tell, neither does Broomfield. Broomfield's specifically delving into the murders themselves here; that is, who's responsible and why. Always very entertaining (Broomfield's got a great, dry-as-hell, sardonic wit; there's one scene where someone is insulting Broomfield's past films that's flat-out hilarious) while never losing sight of the immediate/pressing questions at hand, Biggie and Tupac furthers the theory that Death Row records, and particularly Death Row head Suge Knight, was responsible for both Tupac and Biggie's deaths. To briefly summarize: Broomfield mounts an ultra-convincing case that: (A) Tupac was murdered because not only did Suge and Death Row owe him millions of dollars, but because he was soon gonna leave them, taking his unreleased recordings (worth multi-millions more) with him. (B) Biggie Smalls was murdered by Suge and Death Row as a red herring of sorts, idea being to deflect the momentary attention away from the Tupac investigation (the T/B slayings occurred during fall 1996/spring 1997, respectively) and push the convenient East Coast/West Coast-gang/recording label-rivalry-was-the-cause-of-both-deaths-theory into the national limelight. (C) Many corrupt, Death Row-payrolled members of the LAPD were heavily involved in all of the above, which is why the case is still unsolved. (D) The FBI, who had Tupac and Smalls under surveillance at the time of their deaths was also somehow involved (and an FBI agent is suspiciously cagey when Broomfield attempts to question him).

There's a lot of information to digest here, all packaged densely together. I couldn't always keep a completely firm handle on the super-convoluted web of cops/informers/artists/killers/friends/family/etc. the movie operates in, despite Broomfield's constant, pretty clear and concise voice-over narration (which often sounds like a borderline parody of E! True Hollywood Story narration). I'm not sure if this is more telling of my own brain or what a huge quantity of information Broomfield squishes into sub-two hours. Regardless, for the vast majority of the film I was with Broomfield every step of the way, hungering to see what revelation he could elicit next.

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