''8 Mile'' could be set in a Johnny Cash song, since Rabbit unabashedly refers to himself as white trash.Īnd it is backstage at the Detroit club, before Rabbit goes out to confront the crowd and compete, that we become aware of his odd remoteness. Rabbit has just broken up with his girlfriend and belongs nowhere. When ''8 Mile'' begins, Rabbit has moved back into the trailer park home where his mother (Kim Basinger) and little sister Lily (Chloe Greenfield) live, to find that one of his high school friends is now involved with his mom. And Jimmy Smith, who is called Rabbit and is determined to be a rapper, spends a great deal of time in hot water because of his mouth. Confidential'' and ''Wonder Boys,'' were about the trouble that words can cause. (The joke is that Oakland County is home to both the megastar white rapper Eminem and the parents who are most afraid of his influence on their kids.) Instead it's the beaten-down city: 8 Mile refers to the line of demarcation between Detroit and suburban, mostly white Oakland County. One of a handful of films made in Detroit, ''8 Mile'' doesn't feature the Motown renaissance that Mayor Coleman A. The movie has the echoey, haunted heart of Johnny Cash's cover of Nine Inch Nails' ''Hurt'': maybe the project doesn't make sense in the abstract, but once you submit to it, it works. This is basically an 80's go-for-it movie (the picture feels like some odd combination of ''Flashdance'' and ''Purple Rain''), and the director, Curtis Hanson, working with a screenplay by Scott Silver, has done a fine job of giving it a soul, though it's a gloomy, peeling-paint one.
Even though the protagonist is named Jimmy Smith, the thoughtful ''8 Mile'' is a raw version of the rapper's own story. The film's star, Eminem, doesn't appear to have a great deal of range, but he can play himself. This may be the final frontier for pop, more unbelievable than the prospect of launching a member of 'N Sync into orbit. THE mission of ''8 Mile'' is essentially to garner sympathy for a white rapper involved in an old-school shootout - a rap contest.
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