Big Picture Big Sound

The Film

The Hip-Hop artist Christopher Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls or The Notorious B.I.G. was shot and killed in Los Angeles at the young age of 24 in 1997.  This period was the height of what, at the time, the media had built up as a very public war between West Coast and East Coast rappers.

Now, along comes Notorious, a biopic produced by hip-hop mogul Sean "Puffy" Combs (portrayed by Derek Luke), with major involvement from Voletta Wallace (Angela Bassett) Smalls' mother, and the friends and associates that were closest to Biggie (Jamal Woolard). The film seeks to tell the story of the rapper's troubled life, first growing up as the son of a single parent in the tough Brooklyn, NY neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, through his times as a hustling crack dealer until his break through as a groundbreaking and influential rap artist until his untimely demise.

Regrettably, the film misses the opportunity to explore in any depth the atmosphere and culture of the Hip-Hop scene and the social influences that may have led to the eruption of violence at the time. It also fails to deliver any real revelations or insight into the life and mindset of Christopher Wallace that could not be found taken from the 1990's headlines; a surprising outcome given the involvement of Wallace's mother and closest associates.

Notorious does truthfully depict Christopher Wallace's life as a drug dealer and his volatile relationships with women, but it conspicuously avoids any theories involving his murder, or the murder of West Coast rapper Tupac Shakur months earlier, thereby avoiding any controversy and making the film feel fundamentally hollow and contrived.

The film delivers its strongest moments of entertainment value during the performance sequences, but these are, disappointingly, few and far between. Newcomer Jamal Woolard, however, does all his own rapping and delivers a spot-on impersonation of Biggie, even if his actual acting skills are lacking. Naturi Naughton, who also does all her own rapping, is a standout as Biggie's protégé and love interest Lil' Kim, as is the captivating Antonique Smith as Biggie's wife and R&B singer Faith Evans.

This Blu-ray release comes with both the Theatrical Version and an Extended Director's Cut on the same disc.

For a different take, see our own Joe Lozito's theatrical review of Notorious.

The Picture

Notorious arrives on BD in an AVC/MPEG-4 encoding of its original 2.35:1 theatrical aspect ratio that averages ~20Mbps. The film's picture has a purposely muted and slightly gritty presentation. The black levels are deep and stable with good shadow detail, but contrast is a little blown out. Detail is sharp with a good preservation of the film's grain structure. Detail in clothing and skin is rendered excellently and the encoding shows no signs of compression artifacts or processing misdeeds.

The Sound

Notorious' English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack has a fine amount of musical low frequency extension and good ambience in the surround channels, which helps to extend the soundstage during the performance sequences.  Otherwise, the mostly dialogue-driven film's mix sounds rather dry and suffers from some slight clipping on the dialogue.

The Extras

Notorious comes chock full of audio, video, and interactive extras, with all video extras included in either 1080i or 1080p high definition. There is finally a somewhat useful BD-Live feature included as well, that let's viewers easily add songs from the film to a customizeable playlist using the remote's "Red" button and purchase them on iTunes.

The extras included on this release are:

Theatrical Version:

• Commentary with Director George Tillman, Jr., Co-Screenwriter Reggie Rock Bywood, Co-Screenwriter Cheo Hodari Coker, and Editor Dirk Westervelt.
• Commentary with Producer/Biggie's Mom Voletta Wallace, Producer/Biggie's Co-Manager Wayne Barrow and Producer/Biggie's Co-Manager Mark Pitts -- This is definitely the more interesting of the two audio commentaries, if only for the fact that it involves Biggie Smalls' mother, Voletta Wallace who is able to add a different perspective to the myth of Biggie.
• The Music: BD-Live -- Add songs from the film to a customizeable playlist and purchase them online at iTunes.
• Digital Copy -- Bonus disc with access to dowloadable digital copy of the film for playback on an iPod/Windows-media compatible portable device or Mac/PC.
  

Director's Cut:

• BonusView: Life After Death: Making Notorious -- Picture-in-Picture feature with commentaries, behind-the-scenes looks and more.
• Behind the Scenes: The Making of Notorious (1.78:1; 1080p/24)
• I Got a Story to Tell: The Lyrics of Biggie Smalls (1.78:1; 1080i/60) -- This featurette explores the lasting impact that The Notorious B.I.G.'s technique had on the world of Hip-Hop.
• Notorious Thugs: Casting the Film (1.78:1; 1080i/60) -- The filmmakers discuss finding the right people to cast in the roles for Notorious.
• Biggie Boot Camp (1.78:1; 1080p/24)  -- The actors went through intense training to learn the mannerisms, speech patterns and rapping techniques of the people they were they portraying on film.
• Anatomy of a B.I.G. Performance (1.78:1; 1080p/24) -- The director talks about how he achieved the authenticity of a true B.I.G. live performance for the film.
• Party & Bullshit -- Archival footage of The Notorious B.I.G. performing "Party & Bullshit," which inspired the performance sequence for the film.
• The B.I.G. Three-Sixty -- A rather morbid feeling and voyeuristic 360-degree view of the location where the murder took place, with access to brief, behind-the-scenes featurettes on the capturing of that scene for the film.
• Deleted Scenes -- 10 deleted and extended scenes (2.35:1; 1080p/24)

Final Thoughts

Notorious misses the mark as a biopic and falls short as musical entertainment, but the Blu-ray release offers some good value with its bonus features and interactivity that may help it find a second wind. However, I can't recommend this as anything more than a rental.

Where to Buy

• Notorious: Collector's Edition Unrated Director's Cut on Blu-ray Disc (Amazon.com)

Product Details

• Actors: Angela Bassett, John Ventimiglia, Charles Malik Whitfield, Marc John Jefferies, Aunjanue Ellis
• Directors: George Tillman Jr.
• Video Codec: AVC/MPEG-4
• Audio/Language: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
• Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rating: R (Restricted) & Unrated
• Studio: Twentieth Century Fox
• Blu-ray Disc Release Date: April 21, 2009
• Run Time: 123 minutes
• List Price: $39.99
• Extras:
• Audio Commentaries
• Making-of and Behind-the-Scenes Featurettes
• Deleted Scenes
• Digital Copy
• BD-Live