Review: 8 Mile (2002)

8 Mile (2002) Review by Pope Gregory The 9th.

It's been hyped to the absolute maximum, the main selling point of this movie is that it stars Eminem (Marshall Mathers) and is (loosely) based on events that happened in his life.

Bunny Rabbit, or B-Rabbit (Eminem) is a young guy in Detroit, having just split up with his girlfriend he seeks shelter back home with his mother. His mother, although she still cares for her son, is more wrapped up in living the fast life with a guy at least half her age who she believes can get her out of the rut her life is in. Although her boyfriend is violent and a drunk, she stands by the belief that he can help her.

Aside from dealing with a tough homelife, Rabbit has just split up from his girlfriend who believes she is pregnant. His one solitary moment of bliss is his ability to express his feelings at the weekly MC battles at the local hip-hop nightclub. Unfortunately, although he gets great support from his friends, he has some strong competition from a rival gang and the people at the nightclub don't feel compelled enough to accept the talent of a white rapper. While working his 9-5 dead end job he meets a girl called Alex, and it's his meeting with her that makes a significant change in his life...

8 mile is a compelling and enjoyable movie, but suffers from being far too generic. Almost like a paint by numbers kit is made, so this movie suffers from a similar syndrome. From pretty much the first 15mins of this movie you can more-or-less predict the rest of the movie. It's like someone's given you a bucket of 8 Mile brand building blocks to assemble, each block being a segment from another great 'hood' movie.

To pay compliment where it's due, Mathers was surprisingly good in his role as Bunny Rabbit, which somewhat surprised me. Kim Basinger was grossly miscast as Rabbit's mother, she just didn't seem to fit in to the role as well as i would have hoped. Brittany Murphy was excellent in the role of Alex and the love scene between both her and Eminem was superbly played out.

In regards to the camerawork, it seemed very much in a similar style to movies like Traffic or shows like 24. It had that Sodherberg-esque gritty fly-on-the-wall documentary feel to it. The soundtrack, while again mostly a generic slice to help fit in with the movie was actually above par although the movie score itself was appauling, there were many scenes which could have really been boosted by appropriate use of score music. Instead the audience is treated to prolonged periods of complete silence, which just add nothing to the movie whatsoever. A great shame as due to this i found my attention to the movie begin to detatch as the movie progressed.

If your an Eminem or rap music fan, you'll definitely get a kick out of this. In 8 Mile I found a movie that wasn't as bad as i had expected, but could have been so much better than it was. 8 Mile isn't quite a sure-fire hit, rather it nestles just above luke-warm.

Go see it if you feel inclined to, but don't expect a celluloid masterpiece.


Final Score: 6/10 ''Do you ever wonder at what point you got to stop living up here and start living down here?.''

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0298203

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Now THAT is a review.

Enough said, you know what I mean...

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Well Done MS. Can't agree on the low rating, but choice review.

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One time, my cousin Walter got this cat stuck in his ass. True story. He bought it at our local mall so the whole fiasco wound up on the news, it was embarrassing for my relatives and all, but the next week he did it again, different cat, same results, complete with another trip to the emergency room! So I run into him a week later in the mall and he’s buying another cat and I says to ‘em "Jesus Walt, what are you doing? You know your just gonna get this cat stuck up your ass too, why don’t you knock it off?" And he says to me "Brodie, how the hell else am I supposed to get the gerbil out?" My cousin was a weird guy....

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Good review, well put together. Just add 2 or 3 to that 6/10

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-4

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quote:

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Originally posted by Dawgy
-4

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Rags to riches? unless I fell asleep he was still "po" at the end...All he did was impress a crowd of locals. I wasn't that impressed with the movie overall though.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Klonin

Funny how your quote is per pound.

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i wasn't expecting much but found this movie quite enjoyable. definitly a 9. anyone who says otherwise can go watch "the wash" or something like that

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i agree with mystics mark, the film is basically a document of someones life who i don't have that much interest in, in the same way if someone made a movie about Ray Cappo (ie someone who's story is probably worth watching, and certainly more accomplished than a novelty rapper) most people wouldn't enjoy it.

as for the quality of the film.. well its not badly made, but its just not that interesting a story im sorry.. the fact its all based around freestyles... and the fact the freestyles are all on a script... do you get my point? eminem does an ok job of playing a similar character to himself, and that does not convince me of his acting abilities im afraid. lets see him play lenin in a film, then we can judge how good he is

imo its worth a watch, but i wouldn't bother buying the dvd or anything like that, and i think the only people who will truly love it are people hugely into eminem, and very few others.

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