8 Mile (2002)
Directed by Curtis Hanson
For Jimmy Smith, Jr., life is a daily fight just to keep hope alive. Feeding his dreams in Detroit's vibrant music scene, Jimmy wages an extraordinary personal struggle to find his own voice - and earn a place in a world where rhymes rule, legends are born and every moment… is another chance.
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What critics say influenced 8 Mile
The Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night" remains out of reach, but "8 Mile" definitely matches well against semi-bio rocker vehicles from Elvis Presley's "Loving You" to Prince's "Purple Rain."
Think " Rocky " with rapping.
Sports movies, movies like "Remember the Titans" , "Any Given Sunday" , "Rocky", etc., conform to a strict formula in which the 1st half of the 1st act will tell you exactly how it will end, namely, your team will win, your player will overcome insurmountable odds and/or personal demons, competitors will be defeated.
Though in reality (and ironically) Eminem did not win his last battle, his story would seem like fine Hollywood fodder (comparisons to "Saturday Night Fever" and "Rocky" are anything but coincidental).
Extremely enjoyable film, with a winning performance from Eminem - essentially this is the Hip-Hop version of Rocky.
The "Rocky" clone script, by Scott Silver, immerses the action within Detroit's 8 Mile loop as white boy Bunny Rabbit, a fast minded and fast-talking rap star wannabe, goes against the local favorites at the weekly battle of the rappers hosted by Future (Phifer).
In the end, though, Rabbit is all alone – not just on stage, where he revs audience expectations for a Rocky-style triumph, but also in a surprisingly and satisfyingly ambiguous final scene.
Hanson even manages to slide in one arty reference to the great film director of the 1950s Douglas Sirk, by having Rabbit's mom glued to the TV watching "Imitation of Life."
Curtis Hanson’s “8 Mile,” a not-really-but-kind-of biography of Eminem in which the rapper himself stars, is straightforward, rudimentary, old-fashioned moviemaking, cranking away in the service of a story we’ve seen over and over again, from “Rebel Without a Cause” to “Saturday Night Fever.”
Though in reality (and ironically) Eminem did not win his last battle, his story would seem like fine Hollywood fodder (comparisons to "Saturday Night Fever" and "Rocky" are anything but coincidental).
Set in 1995 Detroit, 8 Mile is more or less a whipped creamversion of Eminem's life story, inflated and decorated to fit in withmovies like Saturday Night Fever, Flashdance and PurpleRain.
While it’s not Best Picture material, “8 Mile” succeeds at what itout to do, to show parents and cynics what all the fuss is about (not for Eminem, but for the music as a whole) and to give dedicated hip-hop fans what “Saturday Night Fever” gave to disco fans 25 years ago.
And, not unlike John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, he's got to prove himself by winning the biggest contest in his miserable little burb.
Like the fighting in "Rocky" and the dancing in "Saturday Night Fever," the rap songs in "8 Mile" possess a redemptive power.
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The Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night" remains out of reach, but "8 Mile" definitely matches well against semi-bio rocker vehicles from Elvis Presley's "Loving You" to Prince's "Purple Rain."
They chose to make "8 Mile," a movie that is for Eminem what "A Hard Day's Night" was for the Beatles: a movie that codifies a myth while turning it inside out and holding it up so we can see our reflection.
With his tattoos covered by a hooded sweatshirt and his piercings on hiatus because of the film's 1995 setting, the actor has something of the quality of an updated James Dean (the director suggested he watch "East of Eden," but apparently that never happened) and he carries the picture like it's second nature.
Think "Rocky" (1976) meets "Purple Rain" (1984).
Like Madonna in "Desperately Seeking Susan" — the only movie to truly capture her lazy, fox-eyed allure — he brings to his screen debut the confidence of an already-established star, shambling around in his baggy clothes like a not-quite-lost boy.
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The power of his performance is enough to make you forgive the fact that "8 Mile" is essentially a rap version of "The Karate Kid," with Eminem in the Ralph Macchio role.
What we have here is The Karate Kid with lots of profanity.
And it is definitely not a rap version of A Star is Born.