Has been called an exploitation of a tragedy, but in fact it's an expose of tragic exploitation.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Broomfield's shaggy p.o.v. always troubles -- blurring the lines between tabloid and serious reportage, morbid curiosity and hard facts, objectivity and amusing, quasi-amateur stuntsmanship.
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
Broomfield conducts riveting interviews with a former LAPD officer, Biggie's fiercely protective mother and assorted hangers-on, but the actual thrust of his evidence seems almost irrelevant.
Deceptively rambling, shrewdly ragtag documentary.
This is Oliver Stone country, but Broomfield's self-effacing affect is more Woody Allen,
Chicago Tribune by John Petrakis
Those not well versed in the rap music world may be a little lost at times, but you don't need to know your Ice-T's from your Cool-J's to realize that as far as these shootings are concerned, something is rotten in the state of California.
This time out, Broomfield comes up with maybe enough halfway decent material for a 10-minute segment on a second-rate tabloid TV show.
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
Overall, the film is occasionally interesting but essentially unpersuasive, a footnote to a still evolving story.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
Compulsively watchable and endlessly inventive as it transforms Broomfield's limited materials into a compelling argument.
A wily and dogged inquisitor, Broomfield cajoles and confronts a variety of witnesses, charting a web of intrigue that also involved the LAPD, the FBI, and assorted gangbangers and rogue cops.