Great Film

Rating: 7/10 (20 March 2011)

8 Mile is the movie that is somewhat based on the life of Eminem. It is about young man, Jimmy Smith Jr. also known as "Rabbit" who is played by Eminem, that is striving to be better and break away from the dead end that he is living in. He has grown up in Detroit in the poor (black) side of town. He dreams of being a rapper, but ends up choking when battling it out at the local night club. In hopes of being able to record an album, Rabbit moves in with his alcoholic mother, Stephanie Smith, played by Kim Basinger, in order to save some money.
Rabbit ends up meeting Alex, played by Brittany Murphy, and things start to take a turn for the better. When Rabbit finds out that Alex is not faithful to him, it really pushes him to be the best that he can be with his rapping. He finally finds the courage to stand up and battle it out at the night club.
I think that the Director did a great job with the lighting throughout the movie. The movie was shot in low key lighting that really helped to give a sense of the anger, fear, agony, and confusion that rabbit was dealing with in the movie, along with making Detroit seem more believable.
A lot of the angles of the camera were close ups throughout the film, and this really helped us to see the changes that were taking place in Rabbit throughout the movie. In the beginning of the movie he was filled with a lot of fear, but in the end of the movie you could see that he had learned to break through that fear and succeed. One of the turning points for Rabbit breaking through his fear was when he was talking with Alex, and she told him that she believed in him. Sometimes that is all a person needs is someone to believe in them.
There have been a lot of movies similar to this one like Get Rich or Die Trying and Save the last Dance that deal with similar themes of over coming obstacles and fear in your life. I think this movie really does a good job in portraying, that in order to succeed in life you just have to believe in yourself and work hard. There will always be obstacles that will try to to drag you down, but you have to have the courage to prevail.