8 Mile. Directed by Curtis Hanson. Written by Scott Silvers. With Eminem, Kim Basinger, Brittany Murphy, Mekhi Phifer, Eugene Byrd, Omar Benson Miller, Evan Jones, and Anthony Mackie. A Universal Pictures release. (118 minutes) At the Apple Valley, Entertainment, Flagship, Holiday, Providence Place 16, and Showcase cinemas.

Twenty-five years ago, Saturday Night Fever briefly swept the world and became what would prove to be Hollywood's last viable musical. It had almost everything the classic musicals offered: a physically gifted and charismatic performer, a kind of music that if not universally popular was unavoidable, production numbers that did not disrupt the narrative but transformed it. True, it had no singing, only dancing, but the brutally realistic setting and characters and its theme of overcoming the confines of class to achieve one's dream gave it irresistible impetus.

So, will 8 Mile repeat the success of Saturday Night Fever and revive the musical for the new millennium? There's not much in the way of dancing, and, depending on your definition, not much singing, either. But it's the musical reduced to its gritty essence, self-expression distilled to sheer rhythm, rhyme, and rage while nonetheless demonstrating the power of grace and imagination to transcend grinding everyday reality.

That reality doesn't get much cheerier than the blighted men's room in an abandoned Detroit church where Jimmy Smith Jr. (Eminem) pukes emptily in preparation for his appearance in a "rap battle." The only white face in a maelstrom of black hostility, he counters the abusive rant of his rival Papa Doc (Anthony Mackie) with dead silence. Not an auspicious debut for Jimmy, it does however promise much for the acting career of Eminem, the unabashedly politically incorrect white rapper who in this vaguely autobiographical film debut invests his persona with the sullen menace of an underage Steve McQueen. Also for director Curtis Hanson, who with cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto evokes a slate-blue, derelict Detroit circa 1995 that seems awash in slush and old motor oil. As for the "production numbers," the rap performances throb with menace, wit, and energy, and Prieto shoots them as if they were the dog fights in his Amores perros, revolving around the rabid combatants and spectators in tightening coils. Few films have captured so well the thrill, the danger, and the audacity of performance.

The story, however, hits marks familiar from the musical and other genres (a glimpse of Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life on a TV set cues in not just the racial themes but also the melodramatic conventions). Jimmy lives with his heavy-drinking white-trash mom, Stephanie (Kim Basinger), and his traumatized kid sister in a trailer somewhere along the border between white and black Detroit defined by 8 Mile, the road around the city's perimeter. Adding an Oedipal element is Stephanie's lumpen live-in boyfriend, Greg (Michael Shannon), who's much younger than she is ("Didn't he go to high school with us?" asks one of Jimmy's friends). Greg waits for a big disability check while half-heartedly abusing the household. Meanwhile, Jimmy earns a pittance at a factory that conjures Lars von Trier's recent venture into the musical genre, Dancer in the Dark.

It's an environment to escape or redeem, and Jimmy haltingly attempts the latter by forming a rap group, Three One Third, with his multicultural pals. They pale before the gangsta pretensions of Papa Doc's crew the Free World, but Future (Mekhi Phifer in a subtle and sweet-natured performance), the neighborhood guru and organizer of the rap battles, encourages Jimmy and sees in him the potential for greatness.

Phifer figures in one of the film's most charming and quietly brilliant scenes, when Future and Jimmy sing hilarious, self-depreciating new lyrics to Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama." It's a low-key demonstration of how artistic inspiration can spring from the banal and the commonplace, and it bonds Jimmy with all those who are oppressed and seek relief in self-expression. Less effective is a rap session during a coffee break at the factory when various workers improvise funny or offensive rhymes and Jimmy, somewhat self-consciously, takes down a gay basher with a devastating riff.

Despite such attempts at sanitizing the rapper's image, 8 Mile can't avoid the issues of race and sex and fury that Eminem bluntly raises on his CDs. Jimmy's perfunctory romance with Alex (Brittany Murphy), a neighborhood bimbo with delusions of becoming a model, ends on a racial and misogynistic sour note. And lingering throughout is the tension from the unresolved conflict of the opening scene. Jimmy and Papa Doc face off again, and as much as you might root for Jimmy to triumph, you realize that if he does, it'll be just one more case of a white guy's co-opting black culture.

Issue Date: November 8 - 14, 2002