Surprisingly strong rags-to-riches melodrama

Rating: Null/10 (24 January 2003)

It's really easy to discard "8 Mile" as the latest attempt from Hollywood at milking a pop cash cow, but in fact this is a surprisingly strong acting debut for star rapper Eminem, who essentially plays a Hollywoodized version of his own rise to fame in this rags-to-riches melodrama that recycles the time-honoured story of the outsider who becomes a star, set in Detroit's derelict urban districts and rap underground of the mid-nineties. Scott Silver's script follows the tried-and-tested rule of the coming-of-age of a young man striving to get out from his no-future life, only this time transferred to the rap world and playing up the inverted race card (a white boy trying to make it in a predominantly black world), but it's really Curtis Hanson's handling that makes it all worthwhile: edgy, nervous, urgent, the on-the-move setups and visceral editing choices (always flowing with the beat and the rhymes) make the best of Eminem's intense, possessed screen presence, permanently attuned to the flow of his lyrics and the demented passion in his eyes. Never shying away from showing an abandoned, apocalyptic Detroit and using it as a setting to enhance the film's do-or-die energy, Hanson proves himself as one of the most astonishingly attuned of contemporary American directors and effectively transcends the initial pop-exploitation concept by turning it into a litany for the American Dream. Eminem certainly can hold himself up there on screen -- it helps that he is playing someone very close to himself and that the supporting cast makes for strong support -- but it remains to be seen if he can hold on playing against type. A great surprise.