Customer Reviews
Purple Rap... - By: Mr. M. A. Reed, 14 Aug 2008 
"8 Mile" is Eminem's very own Purple Rain.
Such comparisons may very well be lazy. But more than that, they're true.
Take an urban kid living in trailer park squalor. Give him dreams of music & an ability beyond his intelligence. And a spirit-crushing job. All you need to do is give him a child-beating father & you've got Purple Rain.
But it's much better than that. Gone are the fancy flourishes of 80's rock flicks. Gone are the wild concert sequences & the embarrassing hair styles. What you've got is a film that reflects the bored, hopeless existence of trailer park America in a way as compelling as anything since the nihilistic Kids.
"8 Miles" isn't anything even vaguely glam, despite its world of Gangsters, Guns, Girls, & Trailer Park Eviction Notices. You get families scraping from moment to moment, wondering where the next meals coming from ; you get anonymous, desperate sex in crowded backrooms ; you get pointless turf wars & urban paranoia. You get everything that is the underside of the American Dream. You get the people who rise at 4am, surviving on state handouts & dole-queue soup meals, with nothing to look forward to but the next miserly payslip.
This is the American Dystopia : the mechanism that keeps the shiny happy face of capitalism smiling. This is the 8 Mile world.
Eminem, instead of ranting on about cutting up his wife & killing the fags & the Jews, has, with his undoubted starpower, chosen this as a vehicle for a message about the cruelty of capitalism. About how the mechanism of industry crushes spirit & individuality, making us alll cogs in the machine. "White America. We could be one of your kids."
His acting is naturalistic, but by no means exceptional : anyone who says he deserves an Oscar obviously hasn't seen a real actor at work. He's promising but by no means worthy of great praise. It feels like you're watching a documentary - albeit a fictionalised one - about his life.
Though if you could get an Oscar for the most imaginative use of rapping & disses on-screen, he'd surely win.
"8 Mile". The corner of Detroit, or Chicago, or Tumbleweed, Colarado, where dreamers dream the American Dream whilst forgotten : existing as Capitalism's leftovers. A thoroughly gritty drama replete with rapping from a star who isn't just some pop idol sleepwalking through a dream of a motion picture vanity project. A modern, realistic take upon the Purple Rain principle of a kid rising from the gutter in his attempt to escape from the boredom & cruelty of the world.
This is the face of White America, even if some of white America doesn't want you to see it. White America. These are your children, & these are their lives. You are a bad father.
Recommended.
Surprisingly watchable. - By: Mr. P. S. Bond, 14 Dec 2007 
The plot is somewhat predicatble - tortured artist overcomes adversity to achieve his dreams. However Eminem actuallly shows promise as an actor (unlike his friend 50 Cent) & doesn't attempt to glamourise himself or his life (once again, unlike 50 Cent).
Don't expect to be blown away but at the same time don't let your prejudice against rap music influence your opinion, it's worth a watch.
Suprisingly good - By: Alistair Pyke, 21 Dec 2006 
I've never liked rap music or any of the behaviour associated with it, mainly aggression & hoodies. Even though I have these prejudices from the start I found myself highly engrossed by this film. Probably because it isn't reallly about rap music, but about the will to succede against alll odds & make something out of a life that seemed to be going nowhere from birth.
Eminem is a better actor than I imagined he'd be. He plays a character very similar to himself, & plays it well. His rapping skills are evident in the rap battles, but then we knew that he could do it from his music career. It is the other, more emotive scenes in which his acting talent shines through. When he has a confrontation with his drunk mother (played well by Kim Basinger), you truly believe that he is a young man with lots of problems in his life.
The story is what carries this film, not the music. It shows the very low end of rap music & how far apart it is from the commercial, chart friendly rap the kids love. It also shows how much music & creative arts are to people who otherwise do not have much in life. This is the story of any inner city ghetto in America today.
I wasn't expecting much when I put the disc into the machine but what I got was a film that has made me see past the glamour of the high class rapper, has made me see how important this music is to the under-privelidged. Perhaps I'm blowing things out of alll proportion, but this could be one of the most important films for a generation.
Special Features are the normal "Making of" documentaries, plus a selection of improvised rap battles between Eminem & some of the film's extras. These battles show some of the undiscovered rapping talent that is present in Detroit at the moment, & is entertaining for the half hour it lasts.
I cannot recommend this film enough.
LOOSE YOURSELF - By: stuart, 10 Apr 2006 Another rapper making a transition to acting? Eminem receiving worldwide acclaim for his performance with some promise with an Oscar nomination? this kind of stuff the newspapers have a field day with. But this is not your standard vehicle for an up & coming hip hop star. Directed by Curtis Hanson who directed the gritty L.A. Confidential. This is a deeply moving , thought provoking, unpretentious drama that sheds light on a world that some people know nothing about - the world of rap battles.
What I don't understand is is when a film is when a film is filled with profanity, sexual content & violence its deemed as realistic, yet when a rap song contains those same elements, its deemed exploitive. Those rappers are simply placing a mirror up to reality. These rappers live in a world filled with gang violence & drive by shootings, so they have to write about what they know about.
Rap battles are like boxing matches, only the competitors fight with words. They search for a weakness in the other then they mock those weaknesses with rap lyrics & I found them very interesting.
Now on to Eminem's performance ... Yes he was magnificent. Some critics & audiences claimed it wasn't a stretch for him, since he was playing a character that he was so close to in real life. First of alll, acting is not just about being another person. Acting is about expressing yourself & showing emotion. Eminem did a beautiful job at showing emotion, & what impressed me the most was there was a lot of scenes where he had no dialogue & had to express the way he was feeling. I'm sure Curtis Hanson saw something great in him or he wouldn't have hired him in the first place. Second of alll Eminem's character isn't a carbon copy of himself, but an extension of himself, just like the story was inspired from moments in his life, but this film isn't a biography.
The story is touching & powerful, yet at the same time surprisingly honest. There are a few cliches like Eminem finding one of his friends having sex with his girlfriend & Eminem catches them in the act so he beats up the lad. But other then that the story is amazingly realistic, which is especiallly evident in the film's conclusion. Its not a tragic ending, nor is it happy. Its a character driven ending. The whole film is pretty much character driven, failing to take the easy way out by manipulating the audience with a corny melodrama & sentiment. Each character is rich & multi dimensional. I assumed that Eminem's trailer trash mother would be the standard foul mouthed, abusive woman he portrays in his songs. But instead I grew to like her character, despite her drinking & sleeping around, because I got a real sense of humanity & her love for her son & grand daughter. The most powerful scene in my mind is when Eminem gets beat up & his daughter watches from the window.
The performances from the supporting cast are also great. Kim Basinger is great as the mother & her performance add humanity to the role. Mekhi Pfieffer, who never disappoints is also great.
I don't care if you love hip hop or hate it. I recommend you see 8 Mile.
Thank you for reading my review.
HIGHLY RECCOMMENDED FOR ALL!!! - By: Mrs. Janet W. Brown, 14 Nov 2005 FANTASTIKAL FILM WITH AN AMAZING CAST OF CHARACTERS, IT HAS ULTIMA8 INDIVIDUALITY FROM ANY FILM I HAVE EVER SEEN!!!! ;) WELL WORTH IT
