Grade:  C+

Director:  Curtis Hanson		Released:  November 2002
Writer:  Scott Silver		MPAA Rating:  R
Players:  Eminem, Mekhi Phifer, Kim Basinger, Brittany Murphy		Running time:  110 minutes

Ratings System

8 Mile is authentic in its gritty feel if not entertaining.  The first 15 minutes and the last 15 minutes are the most engaging parts of the film, the rest is filler ... slice of life in a trailer park stuff.  The good parts happen in the club during the rap battles.

There are too many McGuffins thrown our way in this film.  Rabbit's ex-girlfriend shows up a couple times; Rabbit and his crew burn down a house; Rabbit's mom has all kinds of troubles.  None of these things get resolved by the end of the movie, and in some cases are just dropped entirely without further mention.  There is very little character growth for Rabbit (or anybody else), which leaves me with a feeling of "yeah, and then what happened?"

Now, I know the streets are tough, but Rabbit gets into 6 physical confrontations and numerous other verbal confrontations in the span of a week.  6 fights in one week?  That's a little exaggerated.  "Fight music", indeed.

I think only Eminem could have played the part of Rabbit.  I tried to imagine a young, white actor tackling this role, practicing lyric delivery in front of a mirror, getting into gang fights.  I just could not picture it.  The actor playing Rabbit had to have "street cred" or this movie fails big.  8 Mile is not Eminem's biography, but I wish it had been.  Intuition tells me that story would have been more interesting.

- crocoPuffs