8 More Miles

Gunning for hip-hop supremacy: Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson as Marcus in Get Rich or Die Tryin’. Photo Michael Gibson. Courtesy Paramount Pictures.

Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson’s music career would be an unprecedented success — 17 million solo albums sold; first artist since the Beatles to have four simultaneous Top-10 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart — if only it didn’t mimic the rise of his mentor, Eminem. His debut movie, Get Rich Or Die Tryin’, would be a ground-breaking performance by a rapper in a semi-autobiographical street drama — except Eminem got there first, and gave a better performance in a better movie, 2002’s 8 Mile.

Get Rich opens with a tight shot on a car mirror; its reflection rattles with every boom of the soundtrack’s bass. 50 Cent is Marcus, a hardened gangster from the Bronx with dreams of rap stardom. He is driving with his crew to an armed robbery that, we later learn, is intended to finance his debut album. Everything goes wrong in the aftermath, though, and Marcus winds up bleeding on the pavement outside his grandparents’ house, eight bullets in his body, a ninth about to pound through his head. The movie jumps to flashback as his attacker pulls the trigger.

Marcus is the orphaned son of Katrina (Serena Reeder), a murdered drug dealer. “Everybody was in love with my mom, so anyone could have been my dad,” 50 intones in one of many voiceovers. After Katrina’s unsolved killing, young Marcus (Marc John Jefferies) adopts her profession, slinging dime bags on street corners. Charlene (Rhyon Nicole Brown), the object of his affection, is dispatched to the suburbs when her stepfather finds a tape of the steamy song that Marcus has made for her.

50 resumes the role after Marcus buys his first gun. His supplier, the menacing Majestic (Adewale Akkinnuoye-Agbaje), teaches him how to cook cocaine into crack. Marcus becomes Majestic’s best soldier, and is introduced to crime lord Levar (Bill Duke) — “God, Allah, Buddha, all rolled up into one big n-----.” Both men were Katrina’s lovers; either could be Marcus’s father. Akkinnuoye-Agbaje plays Majestic with the wide-eyed rage that he wielded as Simon Adebisi on Oz, HBO’s most brutal prison drama. Duke gives Levar Marlon Brando’s Godfather voice: his lines come as a hoarse rumble.

Marcus spots the adult Charlene (Joy Bryant), now a lithe dancer, while cruising in a Mercedes that he bought with a backpack full of cash. He is brash and witty when he picks her up, taking her from a dance instructor who is probably her boyfriend. But Charlene’s reasons for going along — then standing by Marcus’s side, and having his son, when he is jailed for shooting a drug rival — are never made clear. Marcus is years away from achieving fame and fortune as a rapper; he hasn’t found the inner fire that powers his music at the end of the movie. (Which, by the way, is where most of Get Rich’s rapping happens. Closer to the start, Marcus is remarkably quiet for someone who aims to make a living with his words.) In the meantime, Charlene seems too strong, too confident to want or need a troubled thug in her life.

Get Rich surrounds its star with impressive talent. The movie is directed by six-time Oscar nominee Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father, In America). He fills its frames with gloom and grit, but forsakes a fundamental rule of storytelling: show, don’t tell. Sheridan makes Marcus a persistent narrator, dropping him in again and again to advance the narrative. Screenwriter Terence Winter, a two-time Emmy winner for The Sopranos, has crafted convincing dialogue, but the scope of his script leaves Sheridan too little opportunity to develop its characters. Only 50 Cent’s character gets enough screen time to grow three dimensions, but the rapper isn’t up to the job. I watched Get Rich in a Toronto theatre rammed with his fans — hip-hop stars Kardinal Offishall and Solitair were there, along with a throng of contest winners from local urban radio station FlowFM — but the crowd howled every time 50 turned tender. Loud hoots greeted his love scene with Bryant.

Cue the jailhouse rhymes: A friendship with Bama (Terence Howard), left, leads to a rap career for Marcus. Photo Michael Gibson. Courtesy Paramount Pictures.

The movie jolts alive, though, when Marcus is attacked in a prison shower and saved by Bama, a Southern hustler, superbly acted by Terrence Howard. Bama says “man” the same way Howard’s DJay did in Hustle & Flow (with a near-silent g at the finish), a movie about a pimp-turned-rapper that succeeded because Howard stood at its centre. He is instantly likeable here, cracking jokes even as he lies handcuffed and naked on the shower floor.

50 Cent is a better rhymer than Howard, but the former can’t touch the latter’s acting chops. Good thing for Get Rich, then, that Bama becomes Marcus’s manager. Howard as Bama carries the film to its finish. The plot catches up to the beginning (Marcus’s shooting), then slows to study his recuperation and return to the rap game. His new lyrics humiliate Majestic, who cannot accept Marcus’s decision to stop selling drugs. Their violent, climactic confrontation is inevitable.

All this, it bears mentioning, mirrors 50 Cent’s real life: Curtis Jackson was raised by a single mother who was shot and killed in a drug deal when he was a boy. He lived with grandparents, became a crack dealer, started a rap career, and was shot nine times — including once in the face — before the release of his planned debut, 2000’s Power of the Dollar. Columbia Records dropped his contract, but 50 became an underground god by attacking his rivals on countless mixtapes made for sale on New York City street corners. Eminem and business partner Dr. Dre signed him to a $1-million US recording contract; the rest is retail history.

50’s hard-luck life is what makes him a hip-hop hero, despite his less-than-stellar microphone skills. (He can ride a hook like few others, but his monotone mumbles lack the infectious verve of, say, Eminem. And no, his voice isn’t any livelier under Sheridan’s direction.) In a genre that craves street-level respect, or what used to be called juice, no MC has a bigger mythology. Fiddy sells because he’s bulletproof.

Get Rich will likely achieve blockbuster status ($100 million US in domestic box-office sales) for the same reason — it’s the almost-true, rags-to-riches fantasy of legions of rap fans from the suburbs to the inner city. The movie’s restricted rating is supposed to block a huge part of 50’s base from seeing it, though you can bet the kids will find a way.

But don’t count on it becoming a crossover hit, like 8 Mile, which appealed to scores of non-rap fans. There is a moment near the end of that movie, after Eminem has delivered his blistering battle rap as B Rabbit, when the character realizes that his foe cannot recover. Exhilaration floods his face, though his features show no perceptible motion. It’s a little thing called emoting, and more than anyone expected Eminem to manage. In 50’s big test as an actor — Charlene threatens to leave Marcus when he becomes addicted to painkillers — his eyes go flat, his mouth hangs open, tears trickle down his cheeks. It’s supposed to be a profound moment; but 50 can’t quite sell it. The pupil is a star, but has yet to best his teacher.

Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ opens in theatres Nov. 8.

Matthew McKinnon writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

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