Straight Outta Compton review. Essay

The blockbuster NWA biopic is reviewed here in the Guardian by Peter Bradshaw, even before we see the body of text we see that Bradshaw awarded the movie 3/5 stars. This tells the reader before he/she reads further that Bradshaw has some mixed feeling about the movie. The review is aimed at potential movie go-ers but prehaps more specifically, people who are aware and have knowledge of this period in time or have seen the movie. The whole review is written in diexis, which means a reader who is unaware of the late 80s west coast hip hop scene, may not understand the content of the article as it relies on a knowledge of context. Some readers maybe are not conscious of the "race rage" in America from which sprung NWA, some also may be unaware of Will Smiths total dominance of the hip-hop scene. Therefore Bradshaw has narrowed down his audience to those of whom this movie has specific relevance. On occassion Bradshaw uses brackets to insert comedy,"no-one/knew what anitisemitism is(if you say so)." The intention of this by the writer could be to lighten up some of the harsher themes of the review, and make them easier to digest. The writer tackles a couple of harsh topics, he does this in two ways. One in a damming inditment of the movie's neglect of the serious misogyny, antisemitism and drug problems of hip-hop at them time. "The movie fails to get perspective of the misogynistic culture of hip-hop." However he also praises the movie for doing a "good job" of how NWA tackled cencorship and how black America was oppressed by the "white world of success." This review ends with one of the shortest sentences of the article, "it twists the volume dial clockwise." This leaves the article with a punch to make the review stick in the head of the reader. The last line is obviously a reference to the musical element of this music bipic. Therefore it is also a very suitable line to end the review with. Overall Bradshaw has very mixed view on "straight outta compton." However it still comes across as though Bradshaw enjoyed himself and seems as though he is recommending the motion picture.