Looking back at these performances it’s without a doubt that not only the music industry suffered a loss when Tupac was murdered, but the movie industry was also robbed from a talent. Tupac was a talented actor who did not have a good nose for picking high profile projects as most movies were only theatrically released in the US, even some of them only had small runs and all of them made little money at the box office, Poetic Justice being an exception.
Though none of his movies he stars in is a bad movie none of them is really considered a classic either and as far as I know none of his movies has even got a Special Edition DVD treatment of some sorts. Tupac was a talented actor but he reached only a small crowd with his films and that’s shame. When mentioning to people I was working on this article they looked at me and gave me a confused look and say something like “why would you put yourself through that?” and when I replied that he’s actually a good actor the give me a disbelieving look. I think that’s something Tupac had coming of course as most people know only the stage persona, the feud, the killing and his music. It’s fair to mention that the characters that Tupac has played over the years show a more gentler character than the Tupac we know from his music, music videos and performances. Tupac never had a big enough movie hit to showcase himself to the entire world as an actor and that’s a shame.
One thing that’s in a way difficult to look at are the scenes in which Tupac gets killed. He gets killed in four of his movies, two times by gunshots, one time by having his throat slit and one time he’s dropped off a building. Especially the gunshot deaths have a weird vibe to them knowing that in real life bullets are what killed him. In Gang Related, the last movie and released while he was already dead, he at one point says that he deserves to die. At some cases you get the feeling that he knew what his destiny in real life would be and it resonated in his movies. After watching Tupac Resurrection I can only confirm that in fact he was aware of the fact that he would probably die young. I was never a big fan of his music but over the last month I became familiar with his acting which I enjoyed and in my opinion it’s a damn shame he’s not with us no more because I can’t help but think that his real big break in movies was lurking around the corner.
