Poole is soon pulled into a depressing morass of corruption throughout the LAPD, and begins an obsession spanning nearly two decades. police officers, one of whom was affiliated with Death Row Records - rivals of Notorious B.I.G.’s Bad Boy Records. Depp occupies the lead role of Russell Poole, the Los Angeles detective initially tasked with investigating Wallace’s death before a separate-but-related shooting nine days later involving two L.A. Arriving on VOD this week after several years languishing on studio shelves (it was filmed in 2016 and originally scheduled for release in 2018), the film’s leading turn from tarnished star Johnny Depp makes its very existence as much a time capsule as the subject matter it covers.īased on the book LAbyrinth by author Randall Sullivan, the film hones in on the events surrounding Wallace’s shooting, with Furman using his Lincoln Lawyer-honed procedural skills to jump-off into a wider examination of corruption within the LAPD. It speaks to how much of an impact both musicians made in such a short time that the curiosity surrounding their respective deaths remains a heated part of the cultural conversation nearly a quarter-century later.ĭirector Brad Furman’s City of Lies attempts to both answer and add to this speculation, but a scattershot stylistic approach and some questionable narrative choices make the film a mixed bag at best. As a high school student at the time, shock at their passings was coupled with speculation on who did it and why.
Occurring within months of each other in late 1996 and early 1997, the shooting deaths of rap icons Tupac Shakur and Christopher “Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace are indelible stamps on a particular moment in time.