“Straight Outta Compton,” the movie about L.A.’s seminal gangsta rap act N.W.A., is set in the late 1980s and early ’90s. It more than peripherally touches on the strained relations between young African-Americans and police at the time.

But do the drughouse-wrecking motorized battering rams, aggressive harassment by the Daryl Gates era LAPD and Rodney King unrest the film depicts still have relevance today, when new video footage of police brutalizing blacks from across the nation is a weekly occurrence?

“It’s absolutely relevant,” says Corey Hawkins, who plays Andre “Dr. Dre” Young in the film. “The timing couldn’t be, for lack of better words, more perfect. It’s a sad relevance, and it’s sad that we’re still having this conversation. I’m tired of seeing people dying every day, I’m tired of seeing people go to jail for nothing. We’ve just got to start a dialog and keep our foot on the gas like they kept their foot on the gas.

“When everybody was like, ‘Oh, hold up, N.W.A., you’re taking it a little too far. Now the white kids are listening to this music. Hold up, man!’ they put their foot on the gas and said ‘Forget that. We’re gonna get our message out there. If it applies in Compton, it applies in Idaho. It doesn’t matter where you’re from; it’s about respecting our human rights.’ ”

The film’s director F. Gary Gray, who grew up in South Central L.A. at the same time as N.W.A.’s members did, says a lot more than his own memories informed the project.

“I did a lot of homework,” Gray explains. “Months of interviews with the original members of the group, out of which came these stories of how they interacted with law enforcement. That’s what you see in the movie.”

Antoine Carraby, a member of the group who goes by DJ Yella and was an adviser on the movie, recalls experiences that inspired N.W.A.’s defiant material, especially the harassment that led to their most controversial song, “F—k tha Police,” during the “Straight Outta Compton” album recording sessions.

“It’s true, we grew up in a ghetto,” said the Compton native. “To us it wasn’t too bad, but the police brutality was like that. You see three or four black kids hanging out, they pull you over, jackin’ you, makin’ you get down on the ground. Just like in the movie, getting jacked in front of the studio, that really happened a couple of times. For whatever reason, we don’t know. We ain’t doing nothing there. We might’ve been hanging out, but we in the studio working. It was really like that.

“But in them days, the brutality was deep in the ghetto. Now it’s moved to the suburbs. Cops are doing crazy things now, and they catching theyselves; bodycams, carcams. But until they really start giving these cops time — 50 years, 100 years — it’s not gonna stop. As long as they keep getting off, nothing’s gonna happen. It’s been going on since before N.W.A.”

The movie depicts the young men as generally, if angrily, cooperating with police orders (except for that one concert in Detroit), something Yella says they knew was a matter of life and death. The next generation of actors depicting them has a more complex view of such confrontations.

“To be honest, sometimes you have to know your rights,” Hawkins says. “If you feel your rights are being abused by the authorities and you don’t say something, sometimes the cops don’t know how far to take it. They have a hard job, but at the same time I think it’s just about educating yourself.”

“You’ve gotta know your rights and you’ve gotta know which fights to pick,” adds O’Shea Jackson Jr., who portrays his father, Ice Cube, in the movie. “If you’ve got an aggressive officer from the get-go, bro you need to just figure out how you can get home. Whatever you’ve gotta do to comply, it’s about getting home and seeing your family again at this point. If he gotta take you to jail, you (at least) gonna be alive.”

“Yeah, it’s self-preservation,” concurs Jason Mitchell, who plays the late dope dealer turned band bankroller Eric “Eazy-E” Wright. “But I think, so many times, people walk around with a chip on their shoulder. It’s justified, I can’t say that it isn’t; there have been a bunch of recorded things that have went on that are just outstanding, as far as I’m concerned. But y’know, two wrongs don’t make it right, so at least try to be right for yourself. Whether you’re a cop or a citizen, you have to try to live up to be the good model cop or the model citizen. You have that responsibility just as a human.”

Whatever his movie does or doesn’t to the debate about police brutality in America today, director Gray has hope for the real world.

“Because of the headlines, you can’t help but believe that change has to come,” Gray feels. “It’s no longer swept under the rug, it’s no longer in the shadows of society, it’s right here in the forefront. I think that’s going to push our leaders to make change, it’s going to push certain law enforcement officials and officers to do the right thing. I’m optimistic that all of this attention is going to put the pressure in the right places.”