Starring: Angela Bassett, Laurence Fishburne
Director: Brian Gibson
Producers: Doug Chapin and Barry Krost
Screenplay: Kate Lanier, based on I, Tina, by Tina Turner and Kurt Loder
Music: Stanley Clarke
Released by Touchstone Pictures
What's Love Got To Do With It is a biographical sketch of the life of Tina Turner (Angela Bassett), concentrating on the years between the late 1950s and the early 1980s. The focus is primarily on Turner's disastrous marriage to Ike Turner (Larry Fishburne), the man who created her career while nearly destroying her life. Her struggles to escape from under his abusive thumb and make it on her own fuel this surprisingly effective film.
Going into the movie, I have to admit that I wasn't optimistic. It's all-too-easy to put together an exploitative film based on the life of a well-known musical figure and foist it on an unsuspecting public. Oliver Stone proved with The Doors that just because someone in the music business is surrounded by controversy, his or her life won't necessarily translate into a compelling motion picture. However, where the cinematic account of Jim Morrison's life was dull and pretentious, Turner's story is suffused with energy and passion.
The music scenes are electric. Superbly acted and choreographed, these are some of the best of their kind to be found in any recent movie. While Tina Turner covers all her own songs, it's impossible to tell that Angela Bassett's voice is being dubbed out. Laurence Fishburne does his own singing. These musical selections will remind everyone of the importance of Turner's role in recent pop history.
Punctuating the film's energized performances are several darkly violent scenes. These are frighteningly intense and graphic, not because they are especially bloody, but because the participants do exemplary jobs bringing volatile emotions to the surface. Often, abuse scenes are over-dramatized, but What's Love Got To Do With It avoids that trap -- this is a gut-wrenchingly realistic display.
Angela Bassett, who was Betty Shabazz in Malcolm X, is outstanding as Tina Turner. Physically, she bears only a passing resemblance to the singer (this is reinforced when Turner makes a brief appearance in the film's closing moments), but she has captured the mannerisms, vocal patterns, and explosive energy.
Lawrence Fishburne was already widely-known and well-respected coming into What's Love Got To Do With It, but his performance as Ike Turner will enhance his reputation. He gets to play both hero and villain -- the slickly charismatic singer transformed by jealousy and drugs into a brutal beast. Any Jekyll and Hyde personae demands ability and range, and Fishburne exhibits both qualities. His character displays many facets, transcending the level of the common "bad husband".
What's Love Got To Do With It is well-paced. Credit director Brian Gibson for this. He avoids the tendency of biographies to become mired in irrelevancies. The film, nearly two hours long, seems much shorter. Gibson neatly transitions his project through the turbulent decades of the sixties and seventies, effectively capturing the essence of those eras. It's not just the costumes and hairdos that reflect the times, but the attitudes of the participants as well.
You don't have to be a Tina Turner fan to appreciate this movie, but, regardless of your opinion of her music, What's Love Got To Do With It cannot fail to impart an impression of her courage and inner strength. Although ultimately a triumphant story, this biography doesn't see its subject through rose-colored glasses. It takes chances, and that's why it works. Visually impressive with a dazzling soundtrack, What's Love Got To Do With It is a solid dramatic alternative to the bloated, overbudgeted summer action films.
© 1993, 1996 James Berardinelli