What probably helped Straight Outta Compton do so well was that it wasn't all gangsta gunplay.

NPR: 'Straight Outta Compton,' 20 Years Later

As the gunplay persists, lawmakers in Washington wrestled this week with the divisive politics of firearms.

CNN: In just seconds, a boy, a gun, a death, then grief

Add some gritty atmosphere, a surfeit of snappy dialogue, a dash of gunplay, and we've got cinema that leaves us wanting more.

WSJ: Black and White and Noir | Dark Crimes: Film Noir Thrillers | By David Mermelstein

They see their romantic disasters, shown in copious flashbacks, as Hollywood melodramas, their rustic gunplay in terms of war movies, their erotic dreams as musical numbers.

NEWYORKER: Hallelujah the Hills

Then it was the Plaxico gunplay.

WSJ: Jason Gay: Stevie Johnson's Controversial Interpretive Dance

The richly textured populist panorama, with its long-simmering feuds, casual gunplay, corrupt local politics, and the shoddy justice of vigilante mobs, blends the comic hyperbole of long-ago tall tales with the intense melodramatic spectacle of life and death in the daily balance.

NEWYORKER: Wild Girl