Marshall Lore Eminem charges onscreen, replaying his life in the bad old days.

By Ted Lambert

8 Mile
Directed by Curtis Hanson
Starring Eminem, Mekhi Phifer, Brittany Murphy, Kim Basinger

There’s nothing new about bad-boy pop stars turning into bad-boy movie heroes. Take Ice Cube (Boyz N the Hood) or Prince (Purple Rain) or even Elvis (Jailhouse Rock). Now Eminem joins their ranks with 8 Mile, a semiautobiographical look at his hard-knock life growing up in grimmest Detroit. And he shines in a lead role he rarely plays these days: a boy who’s low on swagger and high on humility.

Eminem brings something new to Hollywood’s rags-to-the-verge-of-riches formula: pain. Real pain. As in, no money, shitty job, lying girlfriends, friends he can’t possibly trust and a trashy mom who sluts around with a guy he knew back when he was in high school. That’s some capital-p Pain right there, and Eminem is an open wound.

The real Marshall Mathers is Jimmy (a.k.a. Rabbit), who, like many kids in crumbling 1995 Motown, has dreams of hip-hop fame. His crew of wannabes holds his rapping in high esteem, but when he gets his break on the mic at an underground club, he freezes and suffers a crushing defeat — and spends the rest of the story attempting to climb back up on that horse.

Curtis Hanson, the Oscar-nominated director of L.A. Confidential and Wonder Boys, assembles a strong cast around his lead: Mekhi Phifer is Jimmy’s loyal friend who never doubts his dawg’s talent, and Brittany Murphy is Jimmy’s playfully naughty friend whom he lusts after. Then there’s Kim Basinger as Rabbit’s ho-bag mom, who gripes to her own son about her sexual problems.

Of course, there’s never any guarantee that pop stars can handle their own stories when they take them to the big screen. (See Mariah . . . or don’t.) But Eminem does justice to his own fable. Rabbit endures endless hardships before he literally gets his act together with the humor, attitude and anger that help propel his rhymes past bravado and into public commentary. Fans already know how his story will turn out, but his pain is worth watching.
November 2002

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