Straight Outta Compton
Universal Pictures | Release Date: August 14, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
72
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 41 Critic Reviews
Positive:
31
Mixed:
10
Negative:
0
Watch Now
Stream On
Stream On
Buy on
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Expand

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinAug 15, 2015
Straight Outta Compton is among the most potent rags-to-riches showbiz movies ever made. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comOdie HendersonAug 13, 2015
It plays like a Marvel superhero movie had Marvel been run by Suge Knight. Read full review
90
The New YorkerRichard BrodyAug 19, 2015
Within the vigorous entertainment of Straight Outta Compton is a sharp-minded realism about the machines within the machines, the amplifiers of money and media that, behind the scenes and offscreen, play crucial roles in the flow of power. Read full review
90
VarietyScott FoundasJul 31, 2015
If “Compton” is undeniably of the moment, it’s also timeless in its depiction of how artists and writers transform the world around them into angry, profane, vibrant and singular personal expression. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)John SemleyAug 13, 2015
Besides the movie’s weight in our contemporary, post-Ferguson historical moment, Straight Outta Compton may also be the funniest, most exhilarating and flat-out best Hollywood movie of the summer. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversAug 13, 2015
Straight Outta Compton plays better when it's outside the box, showing us N.W.A power and the consequences of abusing it. Would the movie be better if it didn't sidestep the band's misogyny, gay-bashing and malicious infighting? No shit. But what stands is an amazement, an electrifying piece of hip-hop history that speaks urgently to right now. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchKevin C. JohnsonAug 13, 2015
Credit goes to smart casting of unknowns in the leads, who click uniformly; a packed script that manages not to feel overly long and social commentary that is timeless. Read full review
88
New York PostLou LumenickAug 12, 2015
One of the summer’s most entertaining and provocative movies. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperAug 12, 2015
This is one of the better musical biopics of the last 20 years. Read full review
83
Tampa Bay TimesJay CridlinAug 13, 2015
More interesting than the hows and whys of N.W.A.'s controversial rise and fall in the industry are the inside snapshots of the industry itself, from grimy Compton clubs to electrifying arena concerts to hotel orgies to studio sessions that illuminate Dr. Dre's creative process. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyAug 6, 2015
Straight Outta Compton is a hugely entertaining film that works best if you don’t look at it too closely and just listen. Read full review
83
HitfixDrew McWeenyJul 31, 2015
Both of its time and of the moment, Straight Outta Compton is potent and largely successful, and makes a hell of a case for why this was a story worth telling. Read full review
80
CineVueChristine JunAug 27, 2015
Straight Outta Compton proves as infectiously entertaining as it is educational thanks to F. Gary Gray's richly textured direction and a thumping soundtrack that confirms rap as the protest music of its time. Read full review
80
EmpireOlly RichardsAug 24, 2015
Potent and visceral in its depiction of street life and blinged-up excess alike, Straight Outta Compton delivers big beats of both kinds. Read full review
80
SlateJohn SwansburgAug 14, 2015
Straight Outta Compton is, undoubtedly, a nostalgia trip, but, this being NWA, it’s one you take in a ’64 Impala with height-adjustable suspension. It’s a loud, stylish ride. Read full review
80
SalonAndrew O'HehirAug 13, 2015
A sprawling, overstuffed, formulaic but highly entertaining story of pop stardom. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsJim FarberAug 12, 2015
No movie could capture all the alarming incidents and contradictions that make up the complete N.W.A. story. But in order to stress the group’s most righteous side, the movie downplays their youthful excesses as well as their flagrant sexism. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovAug 12, 2015
Buoyed by a soundtrack that’ll have fortysomethings cracking open 40-ounces and recalling a marginally simpler, if still chaotic, time in their lives, Straight Outta Compton’s bark is just as snarly-cool as its bite. Take that, Tipper Gore. Read full review
76
TheWrapJames RocchiJul 31, 2015
Even with the film’s mild flaws and arms-wide-open approach, it tells a powerful, engaging and compelling story of how America challenged and changed five young black men, and how they in turn challenged and changed America. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayAug 13, 2015
Straight Outta Compton reminds viewers not only who N.W.A. were and what they meant, but also why they mattered — and still do. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianJeff BakerAug 13, 2015
It's overlong and sanitized but succeeds in presenting an important part of contemporary American culture to a mainstream audience. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChroniclePeter HartlaubAug 13, 2015
Now in middle age, members of N.W.A. no longer believe all of the hype. They’re in an introspective space, to the great benefit of this film. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreAug 12, 2015
It all adds up to a terrific, if biased on the side of the winners (Dre and Cube) history lesson, and a thoroughly compelling, very American and utterly modern musical biography. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzAug 13, 2015
The performances are terrific, and when it’s on its game, which is often, Straight Outta Compton is an explosive look at the creation of a message that had to be delivered by the only people who could deliver it, a message that is, unfortunately, as timely now as when we first heard it. Read full review
70
TimeDonnell AlexanderAug 13, 2015
Despite Straight Outta Compton’s energetic acting and Gray’s capture of in-studio Eureka! moments, it never manages to transcend biopic hagiography, with characters whose names appear in the production credits – Dre, Cube and Eazy-E’s widow Tomica Woods-Wright – faring best onscreen. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeJul 31, 2015
If the movie pushes most of the ugliest behavior off onto side players (like the notorious Suge Knight, played by R. Marcus Taylor), it does for the most part fulfill its mission, breathing life into the origin story of a group whose influence is still being felt. Read full review
67
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezJul 31, 2015
Straight Outta Compton, while often entertaining and dynamic, ultimately feels as if its meant to act as a kind of cinematic trophy to rest on a pedestal that celebrates not only N.W.A., but the successful and trailblazing members who helped define hip hop outside of the group. Read full review
67
IndieWireKate ErblandJul 31, 2015
It’s biopic syndrome, this impulse to condense events to hit the high notes, to provide fans with recognizable stories, to essentially act as a greatest hits album, and it sinks the second half of an otherwise compelling, funny and extremely entertaining film with a beat all its own. Read full review
63
Boston GlobePeter KeoughAug 17, 2015
F. Gary Gray’s Straight Outta Compton starts out strong, peaks quickly, and then gets tangled in complications and compromise and falls apart. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsAug 13, 2015
When the songs themselves take center stage the movie works. What remains in the wings constitutes another, fuller story. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineSteve MacfarlaneAug 13, 2015
It's most towering accomplishment are its set pieces, which manage to be brash, exhilarating, and even occasionally moving. Read full review
60
Total FilmStephen KellyAug 26, 2015
Straight Outta Compton soars for an hour before spiralling into a bloated, melodramatic mess. Still, it’s worth it for the early ferocity, capturing just how powerful N.W.A really were. Read full review
60
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottAug 13, 2015
Straight Outta Compton doesn't shy entirely from the uglier side of the N.W.A. story, including the claims that their music and their lifestyles glorified thug life, perpetuated gun violence, advocated drug use and reveled in misogyny. Instead, Gray's film owns it. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranAug 13, 2015
Alternately riveting and wearying, up-to-the-minute relevant as well as self-mythologizingly self-indulgent — as much of a heroic origins story as anything out of the Marvel factory — Straight Outta Compton ends up juggling more story lines and moods than it can handle. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla DargisAug 13, 2015
The partying is as bland as any all-purpose music video and feels more like another script signpost (and audience-pandering) than a serious attempt to get out what it means to be young, black, gifted, fabulously wealthy and much desired. Mr. Gray does far better when the story edges into heavier, more dappled realms. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfAug 13, 2015
There’s way too much inside-baseball money talk here, when a simpler plot—one about a band whose apocalyptic vision comes to pass—would have been plenty. Read full review
60
The GuardianJordan HoffmanJul 31, 2015
The first half of Straight Outta Compton, F Gary Gray’s two-and-a-half hour opus about the birth of west coast gangsta rap, is bursting with energy, exuberance and inspiration. The second half is immobilised by bloat and sanctification. Read full review
60
Screen DailyTim GriersonJul 31, 2015
Despite a twisty, juicy and compelling story, there remains a staid conventionality that keeps the political and thematic undercurrents from being explored as satisfyingly as one might hope. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternAug 13, 2015
With a running time of 147 minutes, the film not only runs low on energy toward the end — internecine battles can’t compete with the early excitement of gifted young kids making it big on a national stage — but turns ploddingly sentimental in its sudden focus on Eazy-E’s painful decline, and death, from AIDS. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyAug 12, 2015
Aside from these few flourishes of the outré and symbolically charged, there’s little to distinguish the movie from any number of overlong hit-by-hit music biopics of the nodding-approvingly-from-behind-a-mixing-console variety. Read full review
50
Village VoiceAmy NicholsonAug 11, 2015
It's clear that Straight Outta Compton is at once too padded and too thin. It's as if the story of these real-life legends was so unruly and dangerous that the filmmakers became the cops, forcing it into submission. Read full review
More From This Movie

72 Critic Reviews

7.7 User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 81 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
2 77 Project Hail Mary
3 75 Send Help
4 73 Hoppers
5 72 The Sheep Detectives
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL