Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3258 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-05-08
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Hungarian
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 115 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Rap star Eminem makes a strong movie debut in 8 Mile, an urban drama that makes a fairly standard plot fly through its gritty attention to detail. Jimmy Smith (Eminem), nicknamed B Rabbit, can't pull himself together to take the next step with his career--or with his life. Angry about his alcoholic mother (Kim Basinger) and worried about his little sister, Rabbit lets out his feelings with twisting, clever raps admired by his friends, who keep pushing him to enter a weekly rap face-off. But Rabbit resists--until he meets a girl (Brittany Murphy) who might offer him support and a little hope that his life could get better. Under the smart and ambitious direction of Curtis Hanson (LA Confidential, Wonder Boys) and ably supported by the excellent cast and the burnt-out environment of Detroit slums, Eminem reveals a surprising vulnerability that makes 8 Mile vivid and compelling. --Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com

DVD Description
DVD Special Features:

• Introduction to the film by Eminem
  
• Introduction to the film by Curtis Hanson
  
• Eminem music video Superman, available only on DVD
  
• Deleted scenes featuring Eminem spontaneously rising to the challenge of other rappers in five "rap battle" sequences (25 mins approx.)

Special Features
English
Region 2

Customer Reviews

Purple Rap...
"8 Mile" is Eminem's very own Purple Rain.

Such comparisons may very well be lazy. But more than that, they're true.

Take an urban kid living in trailer park squalor. Give him dreams of music and an ability beyond his intelligence. And a spirit-crushing job. All you need to do is give him a child-beating father and you've got Purple Rain.

But it's much better than that. Gone are the fancy flourishes of 80's rock flicks. Gone are the wild concert sequences and the embarrassing hair styles. What you've got is a film that reflects the bored, hopeless existence of trailer park America in a way as compelling as anything since the nihilistic Kids.

"8 Miles" isn't anything even vaguely glam, despite its world of Gangsters, Guns, Girls, and Trailer Park Eviction Notices. You get families scraping from moment to moment, wondering where the next meals coming from ; you get anonymous, desperate sex in crowded backrooms ; you get pointless turf wars and urban paranoia. You get everything that is the underside of the American Dream. You get the people who rise at 4am, surviving on state handouts and dole-queue soup meals, with nothing to look forward to but the next miserly payslip.

This is the American Dystopia : the mechanism that keeps the shiny happy face of capitalism smiling. This is the 8 Mile world.

Eminem, instead of ranting on about cutting up his wife and killing the fags and the Jews, has, with his undoubted starpower, chosen this as a vehicle for a message about the cruelty of capitalism. About how the mechanism of industry crushes spirit and individuality, making us all cogs in the machine. "White America. We could be one of your kids."

His acting is naturalistic, but by no means exceptional : anyone who says he deserves an Oscar obviously hasn't seen a real actor at work. He's promising but by no means worthy of great praise. It feels like you're watching a documentary - albeit a fictionalised one - about his life.

Though if you could get an Oscar for the most imaginative use of rapping and disses on-screen, he'd surely win.

"8 Mile". The corner of Detroit, or Chicago, or Tumbleweed, Colarado, where dreamers dream the American Dream whilst forgotten : existing as Capitalism's leftovers. A thoroughly gritty drama replete with rapping from a star who isn't just some pop idol sleepwalking through a dream of a motion picture vanity project. A modern, realistic take upon the Purple Rain principle of a kid rising from the gutter in his attempt to escape from the boredom and cruelty of the world.

This is the face of White America, even if some of white America doesn't want you to see it. White America. These are your children, and these are their lives. You are a bad father.

Recommended.

Surprisingly watchable.
The plot is somewhat predicatble - tortured artist overcomes adversity to achieve his dreams. However Eminem actually shows promise as an actor (unlike his friend 50 Cent) and doesn't attempt to glamourise himself or his life (once again, unlike 50 Cent).

Don't expect to be blown away but at the same time don't let your prejudice against rap music influence your opinion, it's worth a watch.

Suprisingly good
I've never liked rap music or any of the behaviour associated with it, mainly aggression and hoodies. Even though I have these prejudices from the start I found myself highly engrossed by this film. Probably because it isn't really about rap music, but about the will to succede against all odds and make something out of a life that seemed to be going nowhere from birth.

Eminem is a better actor than I imagined he'd be. He plays a character very similar to himself, and plays it well. His rapping skills are evident in the rap battles, but then we knew that he could do it from his music career. It is the other, more emotive scenes in which his acting talent shines through. When he has a confrontation with his drunk mother (played well by Kim Basinger), you truly believe that he is a young man with lots of problems in his life.

The story is what carries this film, not the music. It shows the very low end of rap music and how far apart it is from the commercial, chart friendly rap the kids love. It also shows how much music and creative arts are to people who otherwise do not have much in life. This is the story of any inner city ghetto in America today.

I wasn't expecting much when I put the disc into the machine but what I got was a film that has made me see past the glamour of the high class rapper, has made me see how important this music is to the under-privelidged. Perhaps I'm blowing things out of all proportion, but this could be one of the most important films for a generation.

Special Features are the normal "Making of" documentaries, plus a selection of improvised rap battles between Eminem and some of the film's extras. These battles show some of the undiscovered rapping talent that is present in Detroit at the moment, and is entertaining for the half hour it lasts.

I cannot recommend this film enough.