City of Lies (2018)

City of Lies grabs you by the collar with the kind of true-crime urgency that feels less like entertainment and more like a late-night reckoning, turning the unresolved murders of Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. into a tense, street-level search for accountability. It plays like an investigative thriller with a bruised conscience, where every lead opens into another corridor of power, pressure, and plausible deniability, and the atmosphere of Los Angeles is all heat, shadow, and hard-earned suspicion. Johnny Depp and Forest Whitaker bring grit and weariness to their roles, grounding the film’s outrage in human stubbornness and professional desperation rather than cheap sensationalism. It’s not for viewers looking for tidy closure, but if you want an engaging, complex drama about how truth gets buried—and why some people keep digging—this one is hard to shake.

City of Lies clearly wants to be a gritty, righteous deep-dive into the Biggie and Tupac investigations, aiming for outrage, conspiracy, and institutional rot all in one package. The problem is it often plays like a dreary procedural that’s overloaded with names, leads, and allegations, so instead of building momentum it can feel unfocused and oddly flat. The pacing drags, and if you’re hoping for a sharp, tightly constructed thriller, this may test your patience—especially with the off-screen controversies making it harder to just sink into the story. Still, there’s a committed, moody atmosphere and enough real-world intrigue to keep true-crime completists and fans of the era mildly engaged, as long as you go in with tempered expectations.