If his folds and folds of jackets, jeans, and cotton sweats are partly Hilfiger chic, they also keep emphasizing the reediness and self-insulation of the man inside them. It is weirdly sad for us to discover that, under Rabbit's ubiquitous ski cap, the famous Eminem peroxide has flaked away and exposed a natural, unspectacular brunette. Whether Slim Shady has thespian chops, or else Hanson, Prieto, and company simply know what to showcase in him, Eminem's gangly walk, taut shoulders, searing irises, and thin, aristocratic nose make him a compellingly fraut protagonistas Betsy says of Travis Bickle, he's a walking contradiction. Rabbit lives on the verge of being fired, and when his friend Future (Mekhi Phifer), a petty impresario, scores him a competitive spot in a clubland "battle" between freestyle rappers, Rabbit freezes up with all eyes on him.Īs portraits of the young street artist go, Eminem's Rabbit is a more layered and credible creation than, say, Leonardo DiCaprio's mewling and teeth-gnashing Jim Carroll in The Basketball Diaries. He has skillz, but no skills, and when tiny chances arise for proving his mettle or earning some dough, he has a frustrating habit of choking. Rabbit, whose name bears Updikean echoes more appropriate than you think, literally cannot believe or tolerate the paltriness of his fortunes as a working-class white guy with rap-cred aspirations. Playing, as everyone knows, a film-à-clef version of himself, his perpetual glowers register philosophical outrage, not nihilist hatredwhich is hardly the posture of his music, either, but people who discuss it without actually hearing it seem to have decided it is. Confidential and casting it so flawlessly, shocks us in 8 Mile by skimping on both counts. Pop quiz, though: what else do you recruit for the motion picture that already has everythingan auteur, an A-team crew, an astounding lead actor (albeit unproven in this vein), even the best preview trailer of the fall? Answer: you still need a script and a supporting cast, and Curtis Hanson, who after all made his name by crystallizing the screenplay of L.A. The outbursts and crucibles which really interest Hanson aren't this literal, or obvious when the actual explosions arrive, we'll know. 8 Mile is above false drama, beyond flashy effects. He lands squarely on both feet and pauses only briefly before striding, unflustered, toward his cronies. Hanson's approach to this episode is coolly emblematic: after a few tense seconds of near-panic, the film bucks the arbitrary temptation of an extended, suspenseful set-piece, and as the blaze licks its way into the room, Eminem casually opens a window and jumps, quite practically, onto the roof of a car. A fire indeed figures importantly in a central scene of 8 Mile, with Rabbit, the character played by Eminem, stranded in a second-floor room. However Eminem burned, these guys would circle and control the fire, preserving its danger but also its beauty, its mesmerism. Surely this technical team offers a paradigmatic instance of that favorite homily of press-junket interviews, when the sanguine producers of risky projects boast of "surrounding ourselves with all the best people." What happens, I wondered with eagerness, when the genuinely best people really do surround each other? 8 Mile promised to be that rarest of things: a prestige Hollywood product built around a true iconoclast. Hanson's own most recent feature, Wonder Boys, proved how ingeniously he could find the rich, unpredictable resonances in the soulful gropings of marginal characters. And from there, the pool of talent enlisted for 8 Mile only seemed to deepen: cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, who gave Amores Perros its fierce, scraping texture editor Jay Rabinowitz, who nailed the rhythms of latter-day urbanity in Ghost Dog, as well as the fevered pitches of Requiem for a Dream and production and costume designers Philip Messina and Mark Bridges, heading in reverse directions from their cohesive visions of more upscale environments in Ocean's Eleven and Magnolia. I started hungering for the debut of 8 Mile, rather than merely dreading it as a label-endorsed vanity project ( Glitter with fisticuffs?), the minute I heard Curtis Hanson was signed to direct. Cast: Eminem, Mekhi Phifer, Brittany Murphy, Kim Basinger, Eugene Byrd, Evan Jones, Omar Benson Miller, De'Angelo Wilson, Taryn Manning, Anthony Mackie, Michael Shannon, Chloe Greenfield.
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