What's Love Got to Do With It

Based on "I, Tina," Tina Turner's autobiographical book (co-written by Kurt Loder), "What's Love Got to Do With It" is a rough-and-tumble show-biz biography that has many of the cliches inherent to this genre.

But it also boasts two stunning, Oscar-worthy performances by Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne as Tina and Ike Turner, respectively. Fishburne is especially noteworthy, as his character could have been simply been a monster but instead is played as a complex, tortured soul.

The film begins with Tina's poverty-stricken youth in Tennessee, where she was abandoned by her mother and raised by her grandmother. (There's a wonderful moment here when young Tina sings with the church choir and just can't keep herself from letting instinctive, powerful musical interpretations rip.)

Later, as a teen, she returned to her mother, who was now living in St. Louis, and there met up with musician Ike, who had attracted a following in local clubs.

As the film has it, one night Tina takes an opportunity to step onto the stage and sing with Ike — and, of course, Ike is blown away and offers her a job. Along with their professional relationship, romance also develops and before long they are married in the midst of their recording and touring obligations.

Ike's abusive nature surfaces slowly at first but after a time, bolstered by drugs and alcohol, he is regularly pounding on Tina. In some of the film's more harrowing moments of violence, Ike physically removes Tina from her hospital bed so she will go back on tour with his band, he smashes a cake in her face in a public restaurant after she's signed autographs for a couple of children and he brutally rapes her after having berated her in a recording session.

Ike, of course, blames his behavior on drugs, but the film implies that it is Tina's success that drives him crazy. Longing for the big time for years before he met Tina, to see her eclipse him as the star of their act appears to be more than he can take.

Fishburne is remarkable in capturing all of this in a way that makes Ike as pitiable and sad as he is horrifying. And despite being too physically pumped up (she looks like a bodybuilder in some scenes), Bassett is thoroughly convincing in both the dramatic and the elaborate concert scenes. (She is lip-syncing to Tina's singing, by the way.)

Though sometimes hard to take, "What's Love Got to Do With It" is as much a topical and tough anti-spouse abuse film as it is a fairly typical show business biography.

And ultimately, of course, Tina breaks free and rebuilds her personal and professional life, an inspirational element that sends the audience out on an upbeat note.

The film is rated R for considerable violence and profanity, as well as a couple of sex scenes and drug abuse.