#Eminem 8 mile cover movie#

#Eminem 8 mile cover movie#

Several scenes in the movie in which Basinger’s character plainly just goes off her gourd actually reminded me quite a bit of my more formative teenage years. You see, my mom isn’t exactly right in the head. Then I realized that she looked and acted almost EXACTLY like my mother… only more drunk. Her acting seemed odd, stiff, almost like it was being recited as part of some out of body experience on her part. Still her performance is easily adequate and her screen time such that her odd behavior isn’t too noticeable.īasinger on the other hand threw me. I’m not really certain that’s all her character either. Murphy seems a little awestruck with Eminem to be honest. While most in his position would have pushed to have their “posse” included instead, Eminem simply blends in smoothly with a cast of acting professionals including Brittany Murphy and Kim Basinger. Rather than count on Mathers’ ability to play himself, he also had the good whit to surround Eminem with an experienced cast of well-established and sensible actors. Rather, he’s all about building small things around Emimen’s character to define who he is and where he’s headed.Ĭurtis Hanson wasn’t satisfied with simply setting this thing up and hoping for Eminem to hit it out of the park. My point is that Curtis Hanson doesn’t use the tired tools of his film’s genre to kick in artificial and worn out revelations. The sweet dumb friend shoots himself in the crotch but lives on instead of dying to drive revenge, his foolish and mostly harmless accident serving simply as a catalyst for meaningful exchange between he and the only other white friend he knows: Jimmy. The little sister emotionally wounded by her mother’s ineptitude and her brother’s out of control temper. Oh these people are all around Jimmy Smith and are each in their own way troubled. There’s no “shoot the beloved and innocent friend and drive the hero insane” scene, nor is the cute little sister physically assaulted in some life changing way by the vicious world in which they live. Hanson doesn’t make any of those usual cliché poor boy makes good choices. That sort of thing has been done a million times over, generally by rappers with the word “ice” somewhere in their name. 8 Mile focuses on a newly adult Jimmy as he struggles with residual anger and finds his social status through the only thing he has, his music.īut this isn’t really a movie about some young urban rapper working his way up to superstardom with balls and raw talent. His mother is irresponsible and terminally drunk, his father absent, and his prospects in life are like those of just about everyone around him: Painfully bleak.

The place is 8 Mile, the dividing line from the ghetto-poor mostly black neighborhoods and the upper class, have more than they know what to do with, parts of town. aka “Bunny Rabbit” (Eminem) grew up in the bad bad BAD part of Detroit. You see, while technically this movie isn’t at all based on Eminem’s life, it does a damn fine job of mirroring the mythology he’s already built up around himself and labeled as his “past”.Īs did the man playing him, Jimmy Smith Jr. But it’s pretty hard to deny that someone, probably Director Curtis Hanson, knew exactly what he was doing when he made 8 Mile. Except for his fans, I’m not convinced the rest of the world is actually interested in giving him a chance to prove he can act. Most people are pretty happy bashing Eminem.