Tupac: Resurrection

Miami Herald Evelyn Mcdonnell

Tupac Amaru Shakur is riveting in Tupac: Resurrection. The rapper is a compelling, charismatic hero: articulate, well-read, politically radical, and movie-star handsome to boot (he in fact starred in Poetic Justice and Juice). Make that, was riveting.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

As you listen to his uncanny narration of Tupac: Resurrection, which is stitched together from interviews, you realize you're not listening to the usual self-important vacancies from celebrity Q&As, but to spoken prose of a high order, in which analysis, memory and poetry come together seamlessly in sentences and paragraphs that sound as if they were written.

Premiere Peter Debruge

Resurrection is a revelation.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

It's no insult to Tupac to say that he was gangsta rap's greatest matinee idol, or that he lived the part only too well.

Film Threat Eric Campos

Takes a look at the man’s entire life and grants us an eye-opening look inside his brain. And now that the supposed be-all-end-all documentary has been made, let’s let the guy get some f----- rest, okay?

The Hollywood Reporter Sheri Linden

A poet warrior of the first order emerges in this riveting chronicle of the brief life and times of rap superstar Tupac Shakur.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

The film leaves viewers with the sad, even tragic sense that his legacy would have been more profound had he gotten out of his own way.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

The result isn't a fragmentary experience so much as an evocative collage.

Empire Colin Kennedy

The results are highly subjective perhaps, but highly entertaining just the same and make an interesting companion piece to Nick Broomfield’s "Biggie And Tupac."

San Francisco Chronicle James Sullivan

Charismatic to a fault, he had the look of a prince, with a genuine smile; long, feminine eyelashes; and a forbiddingly shaved cranium.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Mostly, it's a story of violence, and it's superbly told.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The movie is like an extra-strength episode of MTV's ''Diary,'' which is like ''A&E Biography'' in the first person. Only ''Resurrection'' has a subject who's been dead for six years.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

If you've never heard his voice, this is your chance, and you should take it.

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

Has many puff-piece moments to it and barely touches the controversy surrounding Tupac's death or that of rival hip-hop impresario Biggie Smalls. But it's engaging nonetheless.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Lazin's remarkable achievement is to catch Tupac in the act of discovering himself. It's something to see.

Philadelphia Inquirer Dan De Luca

It's a compelling piece of propaganda that argues for Shakur, whose 1996 murder in Las Vegas at age 25 remains unsolved, as a complicated individual, ambitious artist and magnetic personality by using the most persuasive weapons at its command: Tupac himself.

Variety Dennis Harvey

Lazin has without question skillfully assembled an entertaining, strongly narrative nonfiction package.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Especially good at showing how unnervingly, even heartbreakingly contradictory this man could be.

Village Voice Laura Sinagra

Though the edits can be too living-room smooth, the passion and pathology on display transcend the Tabitha Soren overload.

Time Richard Corliss

This fine, persuasive movie will have to serve as his testament, and it's a fitting one. How many men can say they wrote their own epitaphs in their own blood?

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Detailed but, ultimately, one-sided.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

It borders on deification. Yet Tupac: Resurrection is still a strong film, with some genuinely revealing insights into the life of its charismatic and paradoxical subject.

USA Today Mike Clark

Though there must be a dozen U.S. presidents who have never had a documentary made about them, the late Tupac Shakur could rate his own section in video stores, placed between "music" and "action."

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Ms. Lazin succeeds in conjuring his presence and in showing how smart and likable he could be, but the film's perspective is frustratingly limited.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

There's too much self-congratulatory showbiz overkill, and one is forced to wonder exactly who is getting paid, and how much, for leading this parade in his honor. Otherwise, this project makes it easy for anyone to understand the sanctified, semi-crazed star and the elements that created and destroyed him.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Doesn't pretend to be objective, and the film derives much of its power from the way it invites audiences to look at the rapper's life and times through his own soulful, animated eyes. It doesn't always succeed, and there are times when it feels terribly strained.

LA Weekly Robert Abele

Needless to say, other voices -- any other voices -- would have given this legacy-obsessed film an invaluable context for such a fiery, scrutinized subject, but Tupac: Resurrection (with that fabulously unsubtle title) is intended to be more video bible than textbook.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Making Shakur the narrator works pretty well at first...But once he becomes an overnight star at age 20, his relentless self-articulation to Tabitha Soren begins to sound like the usual white noise of celebrity, his ideas about race and power in America potent but undeveloped.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

Paints a vivid portrait of a compelling young man but, perhaps inevitably, goes overboard on the deification.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The irony is that Shakur's speaking voice is the film's greatest asset: His transformation from eager-to-please teenager to gangsta icon is vividly apparent in the sound bites.

Chicago Tribune Kevin M. Williams

The biggest problem with the muddled mea culpa that is "Tupac" is that it is a kiss-up rather than a real examination of the rapper's life, so that anyone can speculate about what he might have become.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

In the end, Tupac: Resurrection gives us too much raw Tupac, and yet somehow not enough. He remains a mystery -- one who still sells lots and lots of records.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Bill White

MTV offers an airbrushed portrait that does nothing but perpetuate the myth of an "angelic" hoodlum.