Good movie about struggles in life.

Rating: 7/10 (12 November 2005)

This is a surprising good movie. It by no means is a great or truly memorable movie but it's a professionally made and good looking movie that is well worth to watch.
The story isn't that new or original and the movie is quite formulaic and predictable at moments. Still the movie is perfectly watchable and good thanks to the profession it is made with. The story is told in an interesting way and the movie has some nice build up characters in it. It's mainly thanks to Curtis Hanson his directing and the perfectly dark atmospheric cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto that this movie is better than your average formulaic movie about a wannabe rapper from the wrong side of town.
Also Eminem does a great job. Basically he plays himself but it works well for the movie its story. Even in the scene's with other professional actors, such as Kim Basinger who plays his mother, he holds up fine. I think he surprised everyone with his acting performance.
Even though the movie has many formulaic moments in it and not many surprises, it still has some well constructed and build up sequences in it. All of the rap-battles in the movie are very enjoyable, especially the one at the ending. No, I'm not really into this type of music but I'm also not a hater of it. I simply enjoyed the rap-battles for the art of it. It's really like fighting each other with words and some of the sentences are just simply brilliant.
Everyone that's open for it should be able to enjoy this movie. It's formulaic but made with lots of profession, which truly compensates for this.
7/10
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