Gang Related (1997)

Gang Related is the last film Tupac Shakur made. Shooting in Los Angeles wrapped just days before the shots in Las Vegas. Tupac plays Jake Rodriguez, a homicide detective who robs and kills drug dealers with his partner, until the two accidentally kill an undercover agent.

Credits

The story

Detectives Divinci and Rodriguez have a profitable scheme: they pose as buyers, gun down the dealers and make it look like a gang killing, keeping the money and the drugs. Rodriguez goes along because of gambling debts. When their next victim turns out to be an undercover DEA agent, they need a fall guy, and find one in a homeless man who turns out to be someone else entirely. From then on the noose tightens around both of them.

The last days on set

According to Vibe, Tupac was still filming Gang Related two weeks before his death; one of his last major interviews was done during a break in shooting. Jim Belushi told The Seattle Times that things started badly: Tupac showed up late or not at all to the first rehearsals, and Belushi confronted him. After that, Belushi said, Tupac was fully committed and the two had great chemistry. He also said he introduced Tupac to Frank Sinatra’s music on set. Lela Rochon remembered an “eerie feeling” on set; Tupac had told her he expected to die young.

Director Jim Kouf said in 2018 that Tupac was great to work with and saw acting as his way out of the music world. He was also supposed to score the film. In a promotional interview from August 1996 that MGM later sent out, Tupac said he could act because he knew “how to go to that true spot” in himself.

Reviews

Variety caught the film at the Cannes market in May 1997: a good, complex story that unravels in over-the-top fashion. Tupac was “impressive in his final acting turn,” and his line “I deserve to die” would “ring hauntingly with audiences.” The film is dedicated to him. In Germany, film-dienst called it a gripping, carefully crafted cop and gangster film that lacks psychological depth. In US theaters Gang Related earned just under $6 million.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack came out on October 7, 1997, as a double album on Death Row Records. Tupac appears on four songs, including Starin’ Through My Rear View, Made Niggaz and Lost Souls with the Outlawz; other contributors include Daz Dillinger, Nate Dogg and Ice Cube. Fortune and Fame, the song Tupac mentioned in the promo interview, is not on the album. More in the discography.

In context

After Bullet and Gridlock’d, Gang Related was the third and last film to open after Tupac’s death. It shows him for the first time on the side of the law, as a cop who has long since crossed over to the other side. How Tupac’s story ended in September 1996 is told on the Death page.