8 Mile
Directed by Curtis Hanson
Starring Eminem, Kim Basinger, Brittany Murphy, Mekhi Phifer, and Eugene Boyd
Rated R for strong language, sexuality, some violence and drug use

This film had had me excited for several months. I am a big fan of Eminem’s work as a rapper and I was a really big fan of director Curtis Hanson’s work (L.A. Confidential and Wonder Boys). But this film was truly a disappointment. That is not to say that it was really bad, but I just felt like the film had a much greater potential that it failed to live up to. The film is very uninspired and lacking a lot of character and the story is just weak. Nobody is really bad in this film, but nobody is good and that is why this film just doesn’t work well for me.

With the work that Curtis Hanson had done in the past, I was very excited for what 8 Mile could be. I liked Hanson’s visual style in the past and I thought this was a film that could combine the energy of Eminem’s style with the energy and quality cinematography that had characterized Hanson’s earlier work. But this film is really rather uninspired. It has a visual style, but it seems rather lackluster. I feel like Hanson was trying to make the film seem urban and gritty, but instead of doing this with old film stock, overexposure and good camera movement, he
has a film that is really bogged down by its overuse of handheld cameras. I typically love the freedom that a handheld gives a director, but here it is used not to move the camera more freely, but it is used to make the camera shake more. I suppose Hanson thought that that would make this film seem more raw, but it ends up just looking sloppy. The colors are very nice, which Hanson has always done well, but I don’t feel the colors really match what the film is trying to be. The film is way too colorful and not dirty and raw like I feel it Hanson should have made it. Hanson isn’t bad behind the camera in this film, I just feel like he didn’t do the right things to make this film as solid as it could have been.

Eminem is pretty good in this film as far as most acting goes in Hollywood these days. The problem is his character seems to me to be much like that of the one played by Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, a film I hate more than most any other. Eminem’s character is clearly smarter and more deserving of a good life than his surroundings suggest and still behaves characteristically of a young man in a bad neighborhood (shooting a paint gun at a cop car and getting into fights), which is almost exactly what what happens in Good Will Hunting with Damon.
This film focuses almost entirely on Eminem and leaves the other characters to playing very minor supporting parts. Mekhi Phifer is much better than Ben Affleck in Good Will Hunting, but is really not much of a character. The really bizarre part of this film is the uselessness of the female parts. Kim Basinger, Brittany Murphy and Taryn Manning (who plays Eminem’s ex-girlfriend) are all barely on screen and do nothing of note while on it. Brittany Murphy is hot so it makes sense why she is there, but the other two women serve no purpose especially Manning who might as well not even be in the film. No other actor’s performances are worth note in this discussion of the film because they are even less important, except for the very strange character, Cheddar Bob, played by Evan Jones, who is one of the worst characters ever.

8 Mile is just not that good of a film. Hanson isn’t bad directing the film and Eminem isn’t bad acting in the film, but they are just not good enough to carry this film. Plus, Scott Silver’s screenplay is just a very standard boring Hollywood story that lacks any flavor what so ever. If you liked Good Will Hunting, then you might like this film as well. The more I think about it, the more similar the films seem in my mind. But at least one can say that there is no Robin Williams character in 8 Mile. Overall, it’s a real disappointment of a film on all fronts.

Rating 55%