The Movie
Christopher Wallace was an overweight kid with oversized glasses, who grew up without a father in the middle of Brooklyn. He was perhaps the most unassuming potential rap phenom ever. Desperate to make some sort of living in the otherwise destitute ghetto, he turned to selling drugs. Soon he found himself making more money than he ever could have dreamed. It seemed like selling drugs was the only way to make it in the ghetto.
At home he had a loving mother. Like many young African-American women, she was burdened with raising her child alone. With all of the outside influences of the streets calling Christopher, his mother found it increasingly hard to keep track of what he was doing.
Besides selling drugs, Christopher Wallace had another talent. He could lay down a line of rhymes better than most. After his first rap battle with another local rapper, Christopher had finally found his calling.
After he meets up with Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs and signs a record deal Christopher becomes the one and only Notorious B.I.G. He is whisked off in a whirlwind of fame and fortune. He finds himself struggling with relationships, managing his own family, and in a feud with a west coast rapper by the name of Tupac.
Notorious is a straightforward biopic about this iconic rapper, but where it really excels is telling the actual, up-close-and-personal Christopher Wallace story instead of just glossing over the details and spending most of the time on the Tupac rivalry. We truly learn what kind of man he was. It’s up to us to figure if he was a good man or not. Even though the film was commissioned by Christopher’s mother, it still doesn’t leave out those things a mother may want to forget about her child.
The casting for the film is perfect. Jamal Woolard, an otherwise no-name actor, embodies Christopher Wallace and plays him to perfection. His eerily uncanny resemblance to the late Wallace only serves to give the film the exact authenticity it’s looking for. The young Christopher is actually played by Christopher Wallace’s surviving son. While only in the film for a few minutes, he’s the exact image of his father when he was a child.
Article comments