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He’s constantly jumping around from gang culture to musical impact to personal connections to theories about the deaths of Shakur and Biggie, even incorporating some interviews from “Last Man Standing” to reemphasize his points. To say that “Last Man Standing” lacks focus would be an understatement. He inserts himself into scenes and interviews, which isn’t new for him, but it creates a sense here of a filmmaker trying to shape the film while he’s making it.

It’s almost like Broomfield set out to find the people at the company who had never done an exit interview, and never asked himself if they had something new to say.Įven more problematic, Broomfield can’t maintain focus. So, a stunning amount of “Last Man Standing” consists of hearing stories about Knight’s propensity for violence or how Tupac changed after doing time. He does so through a series of interviews with people who were reportedly there. Gang affiliations, outbursts of violence, highly sexualized roles for women-“Last Man Standing” paints a portrait of street culture exploding into boardrooms and recording studios. Rather than start with the biographies of Tupac and Biggie-Broomfield at least understands those are probably well known by now-he expends a lot of energy on what it was like to be in the world of Knight in the ‘90s, when Tupac was becoming a household name. Most of “Last Man Standing” consists of interviews with people who were caught in the powerful web of Marion “Suge” Knight, head of Death Row Records in the ‘90s. It’s clear Broomfield hasn’t put any of this behind him, and his personal investment in the stories of Wallace, Shakur, and, really, Russell Poole have derailed his ability to form all of his emotions and thoughts into a coherent, valuable film.

To say he can’t find a throughline here would be an understatement as he jumps around the ‘90s rap scene, revisits lives that have been thoroughly documented by now, and then bounces a few theories off the wall again, just to make sure you haven’t forgotten them. “Last Man Standing” is a startlingly scattershot piece of filmmaking from a director who normally has a sure, personal hand on his projects. He’s clearly obsessed with this story and his theories about what happened, and that obsession has sent him down a rabbit hole of anecdotes that have clouded his filmmaking skills like never before.