The Defiant Ones (2017)

The Defiant Ones sends you away admiring the two guys who made the big score.

The last part of the documentary is a bit like an ad for Beats Music and Apple--and everything wonderful to come from these two men. “Apple is music,” says Iovine. But it’s the earlier hours that make The Defiant Ones a must watch for anyone invested in the history of hip-hop or modern pop.

The Defiant Ones certainly falls into that overly celebratory trap at times. But the careers of both men are so inherently interesting, and the incorporated footage of some of the most revered pop musicians in history doing their thing is so much fun to watch, that you may be willing to forgive the show’s overuse of words like visionary and genius.

HBO's The Defiant Ones, written and directed by Allen Hughes, spends all of its four episodes on Dre and Iovine, covering their separate lives and their "improbable partnership" together in a gripping, digestible deep dive that always remains intimate.

The Defiant Ones works on almost every level: as a primer on the music industry, as gossip, as biography, as a time capsule of the 1980s, the 1990s, and the beginning of the 21st century. Neither Iovine nor Dre is particularly eloquent about their own achievements, but The Defiant Ones does that work for them, excitingly.

The film, more than four hours long end-to-end, is the kind of solid but friendly documentary all celebrities dream of having made about them, awash in jaw-dropping sweeps of Malibu beach houses, visits to luxe mansion interiors and private-jet cabins, supplemented by drone’s-eye views of yachts and estates and perfect lighting everywhere Iovine and Dre go. Despite its fixation on provocative and at times harrowing (and even criminal) travails, The Defiant Ones never stops basking in the permaglow of their success.

The Defiant Ones stumbles most in the final half-hour, which often feels like a commercial for Beats headphones, the latest mega-success for Iovine and Dre. Although, by that point, I didn’t really care because I had heard so many interesting stories over the previous three-and-a-half episodes. Most of all, I was allowed insight into two men who lived up to the adjective in the title of this show.

The Defiant Ones, a glossy, rapidly-paced, ambitious and often fun four-part biographical documentary.

The Defiant Ones tells a compelling story and tells it effectively and well, but its bloated length is a bit hard to justify.

Even when The Defiant Ones pauses to reflect on grim reality and troubled times, its tone is generally laudatory. We may wish for more depth and perspective. But then along comes another vintage clip of U2 in its prime, or Snoop Dogg's laid-back assurance, or a young Springsteen and the E Street Band, and the music takes over, and takes us away.