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"If Eminem can do it, so can I" seems to be the driving creative impulse behind Get Rich or Die Tryin', the semi-fictionalized story of the youth and rise to fame of Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson. 50 had history on his side, as rappers have consistently been the most convincing entertainers to try their hand at acting, and Curtis Hanson's 8 Mile (starring Eminem) was a 116 million hit. But Get Rich died even trying to make back its 40 million budget, and its failure was a factor in the eventual reorganization at MTV Films. Jackson is not a very good actor, and his dialogue is often unintelligible -- a consequence of the swollen tongue he received from his real-life shooting, which is depicted here. But he would have been perfectly passable with better material. And at this point it makes sense to question the choice to direct (and, reportedly, heavily rewrite) this film: Jim Sheridan, known to audiences as the acclaimed Irish-born director behind such Irish epics as My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father. It isn't fair to damn Sheridan on the basis of his totally divergent background, but it's hard to forgive the results: a simplistic view of inner-city slums and the drug dealers they beget, in which harmful stereotypes are the norm and there's no one to root for. Sure, this may have been Jackson's reality. But if you are already fictionalizing some elements, why not inject some positive depictions to counterbalance the negative? Sheridan would at least figure to succeed with his structure, but his use of the Terrence Howard character, for example, is bizarre and pointless. In the red-herring opening sequence, Howard comes off as an unstable time bomb, but the audience never again sees a whiff of those traits. Everyone knows where 50 Cent ended up on the get rich/die tryin' continuum. His movie was not so lucky. All Movie Guide




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