WARNING: This Article May Contain Spoilers
I’ve never truly been the kind of person that’s into rap music. Yeah, I listen to a bit of Eminem every now and then but honestly, Ice Cube has never made it on to one of my playlists. If it wasn’t for the film Straight Outta Compton, where a young version of Ice Cube is played by his own son (more to come on that in a later article), I would have never known that he was a member of N.W.A. Most importantly, he was the only member that wasn’t from Compton.
21 Jump Street
I know what you’re all going to say, that Ice Cube’s role is much bigger in 22 Jump Street and he is more of an ancillary character in this film but it’s always better to start at the very beginning. I actually think he’s one of the best things about this film – especially as I don’t find Jonah Hill all that funny. I can’t speak for his counterpart in the original 80’s TV series (the good thing, they don’t pretend that this is an original idea) but the angry, temperamental style used by Ice Cube as Captain Dickson is the main thing that makes his character so funny.
Ghosts of Mars
I’m going to be completely honest, for a John Carpenter film, I didn’t think this was very good (especially compared to the likes of The Thing and Halloween). Ice Cube may as well have been a criminal in a cheesy cop show instead of on Mars so I’m certain from the other films on this list that his acting has got a little better. Either that or comedy really agrees with him. He may have been innocent of murder but those trousers are definitely a crime. All in all, this film may as well have been about soldiers on a re-con mission and left the criminal transfer out of it as it didn’t add anything to the main crux of the story.
Ride Along
Alright, I know Ice Cube plays a cop in 21 Jump Street, but it was more of a minor character, behind the desk role until 22 Jump Street. However, with this film he’s more involved in the action. This guy really does know how to do angry. Not even working with Kevin Hart seems to make him smile, and that guy cracked The Rock. I’ll be honest, I genuinely thought this was going to be more of a comedy – like Jump Street – but it actually took on a much more serious note than I was expecting.
Honorary Mentions
Ice Cube’s IMDb page is proliferated with appearances in different music videos – but I guess that’s the case for a lot of singers. He made his first move into acting in 1991, starring as Doughboy in John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood. A lot of his credits are comedies, including Barbershop, Friday and Are We There Yet? (also their sequels but sometimes that’s a given). You want to know the weird part though? They made a TV series of Are We There Yet? which Ice Cube starred in, but as a completely different character. In the film, he plays Nick Persons but in the series he’s Terrence Kingston. Someone please make sense of this for me. However, like the aforementioned Ghosts of Mars, he has also starred in ‘horrors’ like Anaconda before taking up the mantel as lead in xXx2: Next Level (also known as xXx: State of the Union). You know, keeping the seat warm for Vin Diesel.
