Walking down 8 Mile Road

Rating: 8/10 (18 November 2005)

Warning! Content of this commentary is absolutely weak in its grammatical aspect, because it's author is Russian, lives in Russia and is just a 16-year old boy.
If you look through this new 50 Cent's piece of… let's say hip-hop movie (be accurate - watching it may cause some mental disease), you can remind 8 Mile and say to yourself, that Hanson's film could be much worse. Of course you can also say that this project would never happen if Eminem hasn't been so popular. But he has, so this movie inevitably happened (just like Get Rich or Die Trying'). And first of all it's a film about rap and it's an Em's biography. But Curtis Hanson is the man. He didn't try to catch the whole rap history, not even tried to shoot the part of it. He only made very good Hollywood drama about… maybe we can say lose cannons - white people (B-Rabbit, Cheddar Bob) of hip-hop, and about modern (still, though 10 years had passed) juveniles. And he completed this mission. He worked like a good spy - for two different sides, categories of people. I mean this movie is interesting to both hardcore rap fans and 'normal' people (sorry for such classification, I pretend to be a rap fan myself). It works because we have, the first, a strong dramatic line (our hero 'lost himself') and love story (despite it's rapper style), the second, a good atmosphere of the hood (but there's nothing good in it really). And what (who) makes this film great is Em. There were so much pros and cons, arguments and battles (even in Russia) about his acting ability (or maybe possibility), but he had done the job as good as he could and even better, especially during his rap episodes. Having no problems with acting, he also perfectly shows emotions through his texts. But even if he had some, actors around him were ready to help the star with their considered performance. The only thing that decreases my final mark is, as I was saying, Hollywood production. Curtis Hanson is still the man, but I don't understand why he decided to restrict his actions by creating the proper atmosphere and chemistry. 8 Mile is too standard with such photography and edit. There is also nothing to read between the lines, Eminem has his music deeper. Though we have to think about his future destiny, about possible career of Murphy's character, there's nothing beside that. Other characters are as simple as spoon witch Neo tries to bend. I think it's 8. P.S. Once again I say sorry for my language.