Rating- * * * * (4/5)
This film defies traditional logic in so many ways. For one, movies that have pop stars as their lead actors don’t work as movies. This is because most of the time, these movies are not meant to be great movies but rather just vehicles for the pop stars. This one is different. 8 Mile stars rap sensation Eminem who plays…well, he basically plays himself. The story follows the highly publicized and mythologized biography of the world’s most successful white rapper: his character, Rabbit, grows up a poor white kid in a trailer park and hangs out with the black kids on the other side of Detroit’s infamous 8 Mile Road that divides the city between the poor whites and the poor blacks. The story follows one week of Rabbit’s life in which he deal’s with his trailer-trash mom (Kim Basinger), meets and loves a tramp (Britney Murphy), tries to score a record deal, and competes in a climactic rap battle with a rival rap posse. By far, the most enjoyable parts of the film are the rap battles; it’s why you came to the movie in the first place, like John Travolta’s dance scene’s in Saturday Night Fever, but it’s not the only thing that makes this movie good. Eminem is surprisingly good as an actor, as is his best friend in the story, played by rising star Mekhi Phifer. I’m afraid that Kim Basinger, lovely and amazing actress as she is, was miscast in her role as Rabbit’s dead-beat mom. She nails the accent and the look but I just don’t think she’s believable as a trashy slut. Even when she played a prostitute in L.A. Confidential, she was the classiest prostitute in town. Anyway, most of the movie centers on Rabbit’s struggle to excel at what he’s best at, rapping, and all the obstacles he encounters along the way, namely a severe lack of confidence that causes him to freeze on stage and earns him a reputation as a choke artist. Everything builds up to the final rap battle at the end of the movie, which I must say is one of the most entertaining scenes I’ve seen in a movie this year. If you don’t like rap, 8 Mile will probably not change your mind about it, but it will make you sympathize a little for Eminem as an person and it will give you a lot more respect for him as an artist. You should also be aware that this movie has an abundance of bad language as it does portray some rather rough characters from a very dark and depressing world; naturally these are guys that wouldn’t be as well-bred as the folks up in Gosford Park, so you’ve got to expect some of that. This is a rare movie that stars a musician AND has a great story to tell. I highly recommend this one.