From the opening gunshot of "Tupac: Resurrection," the audience is taken on a nearly two-hour journey through the life of hip-hop prophet Tupac Shakur. The rapper himself narrates the entire film, through audio clips over select photographs from his life and illustrious career, as well as random over-the-top symbolic nature scenes. The story is told in chronological order for the most part, beginning with Pac's early years as the son of a mother who was a Black Panther, which is portrayed by still photographs reminiscent of a family photo album.
The documentary then travels through Tupac's early career and goes in-depth into his fame and popularity, as well as the numerous legal problems he encountered. In such cases, the film provides a greatly detailed, one-sided story of all incidents from Tupac's perspective, a point of view that was infrequently seen in news reports and tabloid headlines from the time.
A pleasant surprise was the film's de-emphasis of the East Coast-West Coast rivalry that could be held accountable for his untimely death. The movie spends far more time showing more esoteric aspects of his life rather than rehashing the same old, typical Notorious B.I.G.-Tupac feud that can be seen almost weekly on MTV or VH1.
Throughout the film, the one severe problem that is blatantly obvious is the fact that the narration was compiled posthumously. In order for the story to flow smoothly, sentences had to be edited and spliced together, and the quality of different sound bytes used to form sentences not only diminishes the credibility of the documentary, but also ruins the powerful messages that were being conveyed. The audience is fully aware that these are clearly not the words that Tupac had intended to be heard.
This easily could have been avoided by letting those close to Tupac to express their opinions and emotions, rather than create statements that were never uttered. If the producers of this film had provided the opportunity for others to speak in the film, or at least had Afeni Shakur, Tupac's mother and co-executive producer of the film, say the sentences that they manufactured, it would have had a greater effect on the audience.
For a film that can essentially be seen as a "Behind the Music" for the big screen, "Tupac: Resurrection" is not as serious as would be expected. The movie showcases all positive aspects of Tupac's life and personality. In many of the interviews, he is light-hearted and upbeat, providing a good number of laughs in what is depicted as a very serious movie.
Overall, the film does an extremely good job of bringing to light how important Tupac really was to rap music and to society in general. For people who are not really Tupac fans, this movie is a good jumping-off point into his wealth of music, movies and poetry. However, for the die-hard 'Pac lovers, this movie comes off as an extra-long MTV special, without the commercials, that you will still watch but won't rave about to friends.
