It turns out musicians besides Bjork can make art films.

Rating: 10/10 (19 November 2002)

Curtis Hanson and Eminem have one thing in common: they are creative in America at a time when creativity has succumbed, like everything else, to laziness. Instead of Glitter or Crossroads or any number of crapcrapcrappy films out there made by musicians who think they can act. And the comparison can be made to Dancer in the Dark, if only for the squalor that the protagonists in each movie must endure, combined with the violence necessary for each of them and the dream--that dream of music--that is there for both of them, at least in their fantastic visions of their futures.
And all of this without a grandiose conclusion to the story. Eminem's Rabbit walks away from the movie with no BIG CONTRACT, no GIRLFRIEND, no RELATIONSHIP with his mother; in fact, he goes back to work at the factory. There's something to be admired in a story that doesn't have to bang us over the head with what it's trying to say. And the emotion rings true in Hanson's 8 Mile simply because he lets the actors act and the drama flows naturally.