That it leads to musical success is merely gravy. It just barrels ahead with a life heading for tragedy that, again miraculously, takes a detour into creativity. Does his character really have no other options than crime? Does society take any blame? Could his grandparents (Viola Davis and Sullivan Walker) have intervened? The film doesn't even ask. In cinematographic terms, Winter's screenplay is always in intense medium close-up, never pulling back for a wider angle of society or even New York. The film hits all the well-publicized highlights of the life of 50 Cent in his ascension in a gang of drug dealers, their war with Colombian dealers, a flirtation with rap that never takes hold since crime seems so much easier and finally the nine gunshot wounds that miraculously failed to take his life. Marcus' grandparents take him in, but the boy heads down the only path he sees open to him when he gets into crime just like his mom. 50 Cent's range is not as wide as Eminem's, but he creates plenty of empathy for the fatherless boy, here called Marcus, whose drug-dealer mom ( Serena Reeder) dies when he is 12. As performers onstage, performers who have renamed themselves, they have long played a character based on but not to be confused with their own personas. There should be no surprise that rappers such as Eminem and 50 Cent prove talented actors. The film offers no emotional pleas or social messages rather, its makers deliver an unblinking distillation of the urban experience for far too many young black males. One is a ruthlessly unsentimental and nonjudgmental approach to a life mired in poverty, where crime seems the only way out. Sheridan and writer Terence Winter, once a staff writer on "The Sopranos", do have several things going for them to partially offset the been-there, done-that feeling.
Director Jim Sheridan has a definite following in major urban markets, colleges and special venues thanks to such films as "In America" and "My Left Foot", while 50 Cent, of course, has a huge following among rap fans and blacks. Fortunately for the film's boxoffice, it will draw from two distinct demographics. Stretching back to blaxploitation in the '70s to recent films by John Singleton, Ernest Dickerson and others, we've moved down these mean streets, watched drive-by shootings and witnessed drug deals and gang feuds ad infinitum. The difference here is that for all its biographical truth, "Get Rich"'s journey into a ghetto of hustlers, gangstas and mindless violence is all too familiar.
Both stories are similar in that this path is littered with daunting obstacles, which its true-life hero did overcome. Regardless, in one powerful scene, it connected the grittiness of cinematic storytelling with the unapologetic thump of 80s street rap-an affirmation of the legacy of Boogie Down Productions' seminal first album.Like the Eminem starrer "8 Mile", "Get Rich or Die Tryin'", starring rapper Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, takes many elements from the rap star's real life and folds them into the contours of a quasi-fictional film that charts the entertainer's path through poverty and despair to stardom. Get Rich Or Die Tryin' may fall more under "guilty pleasure" than "urban classic," but it's a film that, at the very least, kickstarted an entertainment empire. The company became famous for producing straight-to-DVD films starring 50, like Before I Self Destruct and All Things Fall Apart.Īnd those projects set the table for 50's push into premium cable television, as he landed his deal with STARZ in 2015 and launched the successful Power franchise on the network. 50's G-Unit Films would eventually morph into Cheetah Vision by 2009, a production company founded by 50 and Randall Emmitt. In hindsight, it now looks like merely the first of many forays into scripted entertainment that would become a linchpin for the soon-to-be mogul's career. Get Rich Or Die Tryin' wasn't the critical or commercial success that 8 Mile had been, but it wasn't exactly a misfire for 50 Cent.
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