Pretty Good

Powerful

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

I remember watching Notorious one night when I couldn't sleep and I was under the weather so I thought why not.I have been curious about the film and do enjoy motion pictures based on music stars.However Notorious is not one of those films that did it justice not even close. It does showcase some of the facts we know about the Notorious B.I.G. such as his friendship with Tupac before they became rivals, his rise to fame and his relationship with Faith EvansIt also shows how the famous East Coast West Coast Rap War begin so the film did some things but still wasn't enough to make the film true to the Notorious B.I.G.They did too much and it just feels like they wanted a rush movie and I don't know if half of the events of the film were true because I have had watch and listen to different stories about Biggie Smalls but yet most of the film I don't feel like they knew what they were doingThe acting is just mix at best because while Jamal Woolard did research and listening and did everything he could to give us the look of Notorious B.I.G. I will give him credit for at least trying. Anthony Mackie as Tupac is just a mix results that is hard to give it justice Derek Luke as Sean "Puffy" Combs I actually don't remember how I felt about his performance.All together it just feels like a wasted chance to talk about perhaps one of the greatest artists who ever came to music and it just feels like a real disappointmentI suggest finding looking for other movies based on true events and not this film. I give Notorious an 4 out of 10

In 1997, Christopher Wallace aka rapper Biggie Smalls is gunned down. Back in 1983 Brooklyn, Christopher is a bright student with an overprotective mother (Angela Bassett). He decides to follow his friend D-Roc into selling crack hiding his gangster life from his mother. His girlfriend tells him she's pregnant. He start rhyming while selling crack eventually beating another guy in a street battle. His mother kicks him out and he gets thrown in prison. Eventually he gets signed by Puffy Combs (Derek Luke) and marries singer Faith Evans (Antonique Smith). His friendship with Tupac Shakur (Anthony Mackie) turns sour.This is a rather traditional music biopic. It could have been more intense considering the subject. It should have been more than a run-of-the-mill production. Jamal Woolard provides a charismatic center. Even his narrations are compelling. He's also joined by other good actors. I'm not convinced about Derek Luke but Angela Bassett is terrific.

Notorious is a cliché ridden, badly scripted, by the numbers and shallow biopic of New York rapper Christopher 'Notorious B.I.G' Wallace.If it was not for the fact that he died in 1997 I could have sworn he was an Executive Producer of this movie given how much this film hypes him up. A school nerd turned big time drug dealer and babe magnet. It did not matter if a girl in the hood showed no interest in his large girth. A few sweet words, a smile and they would be humping his large frame. This happens repeatedly throughout the film.Now I once knew a fat guy who was a babe magnet, he was also a small time drug dealer. Which begs the question did all these women fall at his feet because Notorious was a rapper or drug dealer or a nobody with lots of charm?The movie deals and speaks in clichés throughout. A character mentions not once but twice lines like, 'we are not here to play the game but to take over the game.' Many of the themes dealt here were better in earlier films like Hustle and Flow and Get rich or die trying. They also had better music.Many of the side characters are depicted in a shallow way. Sean Combs was a producer in this film and he just happens to be portrayed as a great guy in this film. Lil Kim goes from a sweet office worker to a sex bomb. Angela Bassett is a hard working, virtuous mother, who raises Notorious single handedly but her Jamaican accent is a bit off. Tupac Shakur pops in and out of this film but his shooting marks a turning point in this film and the east and west coast rivalry in the mid 1990s.The movie never deals in depth as to what was the cause of this rivalry and why Shakur was shot. The film is not interested in the casual viewer but seems to be squarely aimed at fans of Notorious B.I.G and rap enthusiasts.Even at the end of the movie it is shown that Notorious was maturing, learnt the errors of his way but again its just clichés. I was more interested to know why if it was so dangerous for him to go to California, why did he not wear a bulletproof vest and drive around in a bulletproof car with heavy security? He certainly had the money for it, so was he just arrogant or plain dumb? The film never deals with it but in real life someone would had asked those basic questions.

If we're not talking about the impact rapper Christopher "The Notorious B.I.G." Wallace left on the rap world, becoming an icon in his early twenties for his equally cut-throat and poetic lyricism, then we're talking about the finals days and unexpected death of Wallace when he was shot and killed in California in a drive-by shooting. Rarely do we talk much about Wallace's life as young boy, a teenager, and somebody who tried to break into the rap game before being picked up by Sean "Puffy" Combs, who had faith in him and his abilities.George Tillman, Jr.'s Notorious makes a bold attempt at detailing those years and, as a result, produces a captivating biopic, one that is built on complete and total devotion, admiration, disgust, but above all, interest in its character and not his rapping persona. Notorious is about Christopher Wallace, the complex, often contradictory, heavyset man who came from a solid home in New York to become one of the biggest names the rap industry has ever seen before being shot and killed. Not the cocky, flashy, and well-groomed persona he was on stage and on CDs known as "The Notorious B.I.G.." Notorious stars out in humble beginnings, where Christopher was a young kid kept in line by his Jamaican mother Voletta (Angela Bassett), who believes in tough love and discipline, with the bad parts of the neighborhood lurking right around the corner. In the grand scheme - and even compared to the person who is often brought up in conversations about Wallace, Tupac Shakur - Wallace had a very good upbringing, despite living very close to the projects of New York right in the heat of the crack cocaine epidemic that crippled low-income areas. Wallace was told never to leave his front stoop, but seeing all the people dealing drugs on the street not far from his own stoop, he began to idolize them in a way, aspiring to go from "a kid on the stoop to a boy in the streets." In his teenage years, Wallace began dealing drugs and collecting a great deal of money to only be eventually kicked out by his mother, who finds a plateful of cocaine concealed underneath his bed. Much like when Shakur left home as a teenager, Wallace's role models became petty street hustlers. Jail-time and incarcerations came and went, which gave Wallace time to write down his thoughts, which turned into rhymes, which were then worked into cut-throat lyrics that only the genre of rap could fittingly handle and accept. Despite this, in his teenage years, Wallace still said, "the streets were my wife, while my music was the bitch on the side." That all changed after record companies began looking to expand their line of rap artists, one in particular being Sean Combs' Bad Boy Records, who saw the untold potential in Wallace and signed him to a deal. From there on out, it was a road of considerable highs, testing lows, and incredible experiences, from having several kids with several different women, getting caught up in the bitter and violent East Coast/West Coast rivalry in the rap game, and trying to keep friends close while the going gets tough.Notorious illustrates these bitter environments through slick, black-and-teal cinematography, colored and coordinated by Michael Grady in an intense way. The film keeps this color scheme throughout most of the film, and when it doesn't, it captures its brighter scenes with hues of orange and yellow, often showing a beautiful, contrasting array of vivid colors. The film's look is beautiful, and that's one of the ways the film keeps you in tuned with what is occurring. However, at the forefront of all of the events in the film is Jamal Woolard, a real find of an actor. A New York-born rapper, Woolard seems to know the environment of the streets well, or at least does a great job acting like he does. Woolard plays Wallace with nothing but conviction, turning emotional scenes into scenes that bear real emotion (consider when he tries to calm down his long-suffering wife Faith (Antonique Smith) the first time) and darker, more brutal scenes (consider when he threatens Faith after a shocking discovery) into a powerhouse of performance and feeling. Woolard is an unstoppable force in the film, and the chemistry he forms with Bassett, while likely to find itself unmentioned by the abundance of events and ideas going on in the film, deserves a mention as well. Bassett's tough-love character further builds Wallace as a character, and we can see in the scenes where Woolard and Bassett are the only two present that she is affecting him in such a way that can barely be described but can seriously be felt.Writers Reggie Rock Bythewood and Cheo Hodari Coker form a compelling narrative when there could've easily been a shortchanging one. With one-hundred and twenty long minutes to fill, Bythewood (who also wrote Spike Lee's incredible drama Get on the Bus) and Coker go through the events of Wallace's life and fill them with character, humanity, and style. With that, they also take careful time to illustrate Wallace as the complex figure he was, often saying one thing, but doing something else. The film doesn't make the case he was a role model, frequently being unfaithful to his girlfriends and children, and going back on his word several times in the face of turmoil and uncertainty, but paints him more as a figure that came to define some of rap music's core elements.Notorious is a rousing biopic, never boring, filled with invigorating and memorable music, some of which even performed by Woolard himself, and bearing very skilled people in the writing and directing fields to assure justice was done to one of rap music's most charismatic and defining figures.Starring: Jamal Woolard, Angela Bassett, Derek Luke, Antonique Smith, and Anthony Mackie. Directed by: George Tillman, Jr..