Notorious (2009)

The story of Notorious B.I.G is, I infer from this film, a fairly epic story of rags to riches. Christopher Wallace as a child (played in the film by his son) was a smart kid who, wanting to become something more, started dealing drugs, then supplying drugs, until his arrest and incarceration. Once out, he pursued a career in rap music, signing with Sean “Puff Daddy/P. Diddy” Combs and rising to become one of the big stars of the hiphop world and a producer in his own right. Given this it’s a pity the film of his life feels so small. An argument could be made that it was trying to be intimate, a personal portrait, but Notorious is a weak and ineffectual effort when so much of the story is crying out for better treatment.

The film is a workmanlike affair, competently shot, but it only ever seems to come alive during the rap sequences. MC competitions and big parties give a sense of how powerful Biggie’s music was, his ability to speak to a crowd and get them jumping is well handled here. But off the stage, the story gets stuck with a peculiar unease. The problem seems to be that Biggie wasn’t a particularly nice guy. His first girlfriend gets pregnant, so he promises the world to her, then he goes to prison. When he gets out, he promises the world to her again, but quickly moves on to Kim Jones (Naturi Naughton), later to become the star known as Lil Kim. And while with her, he meets and marries Faith Evans (Antonique Smith), another singer. He’s unreliable, untrustworthy, occasionally paranoid, and the unfortunate thing is that the film fails to convince us that the charisma of the man was such that he could keep all three women going, even after all that he did to them. He maintains contact, and they seem willing, more often than not, to be guiled by his charms. But as played by Jamal Woolard, there’s something missing in these scenes. He’s fun, but it’s hard to believe he’s that charming.

The most frustrating thing about this film is that it’s so lazy. It talks about how famous B.I.G is, but somehow you’re still left short of seeing him as a star. While it talks him up, his impact on people is given only a few short scenes, which makes his funeral procession somewhat of a surprise. The streets are lined with people, and what seems to be documentary footage is used to give an idea of the scale of the thing. It seems like tens of thousands of people came out to pay their last respects. But these scenes are at odds with the story that has preceded it, content as it is to be a small domestic drama.

You get a sense of how significant a person Christopher Wallace was in modern hiphop, but it’s not in this film, somehow it’s around it. You can work it out, but the film itself doesn’t earn the right to its finale, and as such, it falls flat. In the hands of Curtis Hanson, Eminem’s far less interesting life story became the far more engaging and dramatic film 8 Mile. But in the hands of George Tillman Jnr, a far more epic and worthy story has become so much less than the sum of its parts. Notorious is good enough for those with an interest in its subject, but given that both Biggie’s mother and Sean “Puffy” Combs were producers, its lack of insight into both his character and his life is disappointing.

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