Strong and Moving!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

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

This movie is amazing. If you're a fan of hip-hop and a fan of biggie then you will love this movie. It got his life story perfectly from when he was a young child drug dealing up to when he became a very successful rapper. It was amazing when he beat that guy in the rap battle and the funeral scene was depressing. Plenty of people say they don't like this movie but it got his life story perfectly and I can't wait until the Tupac movie comes out. Hopefully it will be as good as notorious. They got the east coast/west coast rivalry perfectly in notorious so hopefully they will do that with the tupac movie. Jamal woolard played biggie perfectly and biggies son was very good in the film. Some scenes are sad and some scenes are amazing.

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..

Just finished watching Notorious and I wish I could undo seeing it. I like rap music and all but this movie was awful. I tolerated "Get rich or die trying" and "ATL", but not this one. The actor who played Biggie was not believable at all. The only thing that made it semi watchable was the occasional female nudity. The actor who played tupac also played "Papa Doc" from "8 Mile" and was much better in that movie. This movie was definiely over hyped and over produced. It seemed like they had enough movie to make a great movie, but I just wasn't feeling it from the actors themselves. They need to go back to acting school and relearn the basics.