Tupac: Resurrection (2003)

WHOLE LOTTA SHAKUR GOIN' ON The late, great outlaw-poet shines in a new biography

How charismatic was Tupac Shakur? In Lauren Lazin's resonant and fascinating Tupac: Resurrection, he has a disarming romantic aura, with the elegant cheekbones and liquid eyes of a young sheikh, his head wrapped in a kerchief he wore like a crown. Early on, there's a startling interview with the 17-year-old Tupac, his hair sculpted into a slightly geeky fade, his smile delicate enough to be called angelic. At the Baltimore School for the Arts, where his driving passion was acting, Shakur had a quality not often associated with figures from the hardcore hip-hop world: innocence. A few years later, after he has reinvented himself as a bad boy devoted to ''Thug Life,'' we see him strutting around on stage with an imperioso swagger even arguably better rappers, like Snoop Dogg, couldn't match. But the innocence never disappears.

''Tupac: Resurrection'' interpolates recorded interviews with Shakur, creating the effect that we're hearing him narrate his life story. It's a device that might not have worked with a less confessional star, but Shakur leads us deep inside his divided nature. Raised by his mother, Afeni, who was one of the first Black Panthers, he yearned to be both militant and savior, hustler and healer. What fused the two sides is that he remained, in his bones, an actor. When he presents himself as a nihilist street ruffian, it's not a pose. It's more like a role that's become real because of how fully he played it.

The film has been made in a style of layered, flowing density that has its roots (perhaps a bit too recognizably) in MTV, yet Lazin commands that style with unusual intimacy. The conspiracy theories that surround Shakur's murder are scarcely mentioned. In a larger sense, though, ''Tupac: Resurrection'' showcases his movement from teen thespian to rap hero to public outlaw, getting signed from prison by Marion ''Suge'' Knight, as a chain of acting out that ultimately sowed the seeds of his destruction. It's no insult to Tupac to say that he was gangsta rap's greatest matinee idol, or that he lived the part only too well.