Taut and restrained account of a man digging on through the hostilities of his life, as the allure for escape into music and away from everything else takes stage.

Rating: 7/10 (12 July 2011)

As the credits to 8 Mile roll, such a thing is accompanied by one of Eminem's songs; a song which I initially had a hard time differentiating to that of his many other records and thus merely sat accordingly. As the text continued to roll across my screen, I began listening to it more intently, and then, as half a minute or so passed, I realised I was probably listening to it as intently as I had ever done so any previous Eminem track that I'd previously caught through whatever means. Against most odds, and this is the startling thing, I actually came to begin to rather enjoy listening to it; actually came to begin to rather enjoy listening to the pace and tempo of the thing; actually came to rather enjoy the pace and rhythm of what I was hearing combined with what it was I had just seen in the film itself, something I was still in an immediate process of digesting anyway. Such a moment caught me off guard, but told me deep down that 8 Mile had worked.
Eminem is an American rap artist whose successes around the turn of the 2000's somewhat lingers in the backgrounds of my memory. Around about the time of the film's 2002 release, and a further few years before that, I recall he was mostly all the rage amidst those then of my age – for what reason, I knew not then and know not now. I'd heard the guy's music, but didn't pay an awful lot of attention to it; the tracks striking me as more often than not just a lot of angry talking, bordering on ranting, in a rapid manner which was peppered by four lettered words that became even harder to decipher when your only true exposure to it was listening to "Real Slim Shady" on the radio during Sunday's Top 40 count-down – this a weekly occurrence that always saw the whole thing cut to ribbons out of censorship anyway. Curtis Hanson's 8 Mile puts all of these things aside and tells a cutting tale of a man, whom does not share Eminem's true-to-life name but is nevertheless an interesting case of what appears to be an example of pseudo-biopic film-making, with a passion and a skill slowly finding his forte with such things whilst learning of some harsh realities along the way.
Hanson begins proceedings in a grotty public lavatory in a dingy night club, at least it looks like a night club, because the young and rather innocuously named Jimmy Smith is there practising for the building's true purpose: to host these things called rap-battles that pit two guys on stage and has them face off with each other via their lyrical abilities so as to verbally shoot the other one down. Our Smith, stage-named B-Rabbit and played by Eminem, stares at a cracked mirror amidst the filth, a literal reflection of a man whose skills and place in this world at this point are unfixed. He exits for the stage, a lone Caucasian amidst many African-Americans, upon winning the toss of the the coin, he concedes to go second in what is a defensive act that sees him on the way to "choking" and leaving embarrassed and beaten having been unable to get started.
Hanson paints an enlightening and rarefied image of this underworld of rhymes and egotisms, his general locale is pent-up and aggressive with one looking to get the better over any one other; but it is not necessarily an existence imbued with violence and criminal gamesmanship, rather, rap battle duels are limited to that of verbally berating the opponent in a controlled manner in a specified zone most can occupy. This is a world full of young, impetulant youths angry and embittered and yet words, not guns, often drive the hostilities; words whose perpetrators must think creatively and logically so as to formulate and be able to use as ammunition to force victory. These face-offs carry with them concealed aggression, but are calculated and organised in a methodical and mature manner: if you win the consensus of your audience, you head through to the next round in a tennis-bracket inspired set up. By day, Smith is a factory worker with a hard-up boss and dreams of being a rap star, the lyrics to his tunes of which he scrawls down on his palms so as to remember. Work seemingly consists of walking a few feet every so often in a steel-mill and hitting a button before waiting a few seconds and repeating the process; his bus rides to this place are fraught with roadside iconography establishing his dishevelled roots here, in 1995 Michigan; streets consisting of seedy looking bars and such that are shut down but probably not looking too dissimilar now to what they resembled when they were open and thriving.
The presence of Smith's mother Stephanie played by Kim Basinger, working with the director again after L.A. Confidential, and her daughter Lilly (Greenfield), whom she had with a temperamental Michael Shannon character named Greg Buehl, pepper proceedings. These people face eviction from their trailer park home, as Stephanie strives to win big at Bingo and provides Smith with extra incentive to succeed at his dream. Brewed in amidst all of this is Brittany Murphy's character Alex, the object of most of the men's gaze and Smith's constantly on/off girlfriend in what is a strand that amply supports the primary content. But Hanson's film is first and foremost the tale of Smith chasing his dream of becoming a musician, a goal verbally reiterated early on by a connected character whose monologue on demo tapes and such lays things out and allows Eminem's character to undergo a transition beginning and ending on the stage which rejects the initial paths it alludes to us it will venture down, in what is a well made and intriguingly downplayed drama in spite of the lead's raging fame.