Jimmy 'B-Rabbit' Smith (Eminem) is desperate to be a rapper. It's 1995 Detroit. With the support of his friend David 'Future' Porter (Mekhi Phifer), he aims to overcome his personal problems. His mother Stephanie (Kim Basinger) is a drunk. He leaves his girlfriend Janeane (Taryn Manning) when she tells him that she's pregnant. He chokes on a head-to-head rap battle. He has no place to go but to move back into his mother's trailer. His mom's boyfriend Greg (Michael Shannon) is a jerk. He has a part-time grimy auto parts job and then he meets Alex (Brittany Murphy).

Eminem is basically playing himself and he does a good job. He's surrounded by good actors. The sense of the place is the standout of this movie. The Detroit locations have the proper grittiness. The desperation is palpable. The rap battles are exhilarating. The story is relatively standard with nice touches. This is a matter of the perfect story for the perfect lead. He's not really acting as much as being himself.

`B-Rabbit' (Eminem) is a young man living in a poor district of Detroit. He spend his time working as a worker in a sheet-metal stamping press for parts of cars and with his four friends, participating in raps and hip-hop competitions. He dreams on being successful with music and consequently leaving that poor area of Detroit. He is living temporarily with his mother Stephany (a Kim Basinger without any glamour) and his young sister Lily. He meets Alex (the charming Brittany Murphy) and starts dating with her. The climax of this movie is the dispute of rap in the end of the plot between B-Rabbit and the Free World group. I myself expected much more of this movie than offered. It is not a bad film, but it is very related to Afro-Americans culture. There is one great aspect to be highlighted in this movie: Hollywood loves to show these ghettos of poor people as places where only drug dealers, bandits and criminals live. This movie redeems these poor areas, showing simple, honest and working people fighting for survival and having some fun. Further, his rap dispute, as a type of social relief valve, is also interesting: men and women fighting with words, trying to defeat the weakest. Music as a weapon! I do not follow the work of Eminem, but his performance has also surprised me: his cool character is great. All the cast performs an excellent acting. I myself like Brittany Murphy very much and Kim Basinger surprised me without any charming, as a drunken and looser mother. My vote is six.

In 8 Mile, Eminem is Jimmy 'Rabbit' Smith a slightly fictionalised version of himself living in a working class neighbourhood of Detroit. Rabbit has moved back to his trailer thrash mum (Kim Basinger) after a break up with his girlfriend.

Rabbit works hard, his friend gets him gigs to engage in rap battles in clubs where he is dubbed as Elvis, AKA as a white guy trying to sell a piece of black culture. The trouble is Rabbit gets overcome with nerves every time he tries to perform in front of a crowd and take his rival down.

8 Mile is an underdog story as the working class guy makes good with the help of his multi racial friends.

Director Curtis Hanson uses all his Oscar winning skills to try to sell this as a real, gritty film. Eminem is rather flat swerving somewhere between mournful and angry. Each time he goes to his mother's house it ends up in some sort of a fight. Basinger never convinces as a rough lower working class mom type.

The script wants to be a modern version of Saturday Night Fever but it lacks that film's showboating.