Nick Broomfield, the reigning king of salacious pop documentaries, is at it again. The filmmaker first gave us the endlessly entertaining “Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam.” Then he painted the lead singer of Hole as Lady Macbeth in “Kurt and Courtney.” Now, Broomfield has turned to the controversy surrounding the murders of two of rap’s most famous stars in “Biggie and Tupac.” The result is more insightful than his former films, yet a tad less entertaining.
The key to Broomfield’s movies is the filmmaker’s very presence. He is the real star of whatever story he’s investigating. At the first sight of this Brit wielding a boom microphone in the faces of unsuspecting subjects, you can almost guarantee an interesting story will follow.
Presiding over “Biggie and Tupac” like Michael Moore’s shameless younger brother, Broomfield takes on his topic with unflinching zeal and almost gives tabloid journalism a good name.
Broomfield first takes us through the East Coast beginnings of both rappers. The pair started out as best friends; Biggie used to open for Tupac. We learn that Tupac was a born showman with a dark side.
Though his lyrics claim he grew up in a one-room shack in Brooklyn, Biggie actually had a fairly secure childhood thanks to his protective mother, Voletta, who sheltered her child from the streets and enrolled him in a private school. Voletta is one of the highlights of the movie.
Later, Tupac signed with Death Row Records, a Los Angeles-based company, during the peak of the West Coast-East Coast rivalry. Biggie, still based in New York, felt betrayed by the switch. The feud escalated in 1994, after Tupac was shot — but not killed — in Manhattan. While serving time on rape charges, Tupac learned from inside sources that Biggie was responsible for the shooting. But as the film moves along, it becomes obvious that things might not be so simple.
The overriding theory presented in the film is that the murder of both stars was a mob-style hit orchestrated by Death Row Records executive Suge Knight — a formidable presence who turns up late in the film with some cryptic words for Snoop Doggy Dogg. Some of the people interviewed, including former investigator Russel Pool, claim Knight killed Tupac because the producer owed the rapper more than $10 million, then “took out” Biggie to make the entire incident look like simple gang warfare.
Broomfield’s secret is the cast of characters he discovers along the way. It’s great fun to watch his subjects get caught in a lie or veer from ingratiating to threatening in a heartbeat.
However, the characters in “Biggie and Tupac” aren’t quite as colorful as those in his prior films — although it’s amazing to see the level of corruption that existed within the Los Angeles Police Department at the time of the killings. Broomfield unearths a record industry ruled by brute force, where dirty cops are employed by Knight to enforce his mob-like rule.
The filmmaker is great at showing the grimy truth behind the gloss of entertainment headlines. These worlds are often more ugly than ever imagined. But you won’t be able to turn away.
“Biggie and Tupac” is now playing at the Bijou Art Cinemas.
Contact the senior pulse reporter at [email protected].