Get Rich or Die Tryin’

Marcus (Jackson, right), and Bama (Terrence Howard, left).
Copyright © 2005 by PARAMOUNT PICTURES. All Rights Reserved.

 
I can’t write this review from the beginning. Instead, for some reason I want to start at the end, with the question, “What exactly is the lesson here?” I should also note that my review is not critical of the violence depicted in the film. If the story has violence in it, so be it. It doesn’t fascinate, offend or engage me… I’m just bored with it.

Everything, including the violence and bloodshed leads up to… that’s right… Marcus (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson) ultimately getting what he wants. To quote a line from the drug lord Levar (Bill Duke), “Violence begets more violence. Violence does not beget more money.”

So, in other words, Marcus’ entire motivation to leave the drug trade is because it involves high risk and high turnover, both of which may interfere in his monochromatic goal of being obscenely rich. It’s not because the business is morally corrupt. Did we really need yet another film from Interscope mogul Jimmy Iovine (yes, the same Jimmy Iovine who produced “8 Mile”) to tell us this? If there’s a reason the buzz is telling you this movie looks, smells and plays like “8 Mile,” that’s because it does—in all ways but one: Eminem can act.

The film’s title, “Get Rich or Die Tryin’,” seems to have been ripped straight from the tagline of any number of “psyched up” music videos or basketball shoe commercials—all invented by white people sitting in the boardroom trying to think of ways to appeal to white, suburban youths’ stereotypes about black culture. The target audience for this film is so young, they have no clue when Chaka Khan’s “I Feel For You” is played on the radio in a flashback.

This is the same banal story we’ve now seen beaten to death, ad nauseum, in film and in heavily produced music videos that glamorize the “gangsta” life, perpetuated by recording industry executives looking for any way to perpetuate the RIAA monopoly that, amazingly, found a way to abuse and exploit both the talented and the talentless.

The film begins with a steady thump of bass as if to cue the pop-rap zombie audience into synchronized clapping or whatever it is kids do these days to try to keep time amidst the lyrical arrthymia characteristic of the genre today. It’s not that I dislike rap, mind you. I just cannot stand the commercialized garbage it has become. As Roger Ebert noted in his review—and I would agree—the visual style established here is compelling: The shot is comprised of a car’s side mirror oscillating from the vibrations of the bass.

Marcus loves his mother because his father’s never around. His only father figures are the drug dealers and, in an odd way, a dealer named Slim (Leon) who dresses like Rick James and treats Marcus’ mother like crap.

After his mother is killed by drug dealers, Marcus is taken in by his grandparents. He continues on in “the family business.” Marcus sells dimebags to local kids when he’s not being beaten up by neighboring dealers or his uncle Deuce (Joseph Pierre), who’s just marginally-worse at rapping than 50 Cent (which might explain the nickname “Deuce”). Suffice it to say, the funniest line in the film is Marcus observing, “If Tupac wasn’t dead, Deuce’s music woulda killed him.”

Marcus also likes a girl, Charlene (Joy Bryant). There’s a mildly humorous moment when her parents discover a tape Marcus made rapping salaciously to her. He MC’s by the name “Young Caesar.” Charlene’s parents send her away to avoid what they perceive is a negative influence from Marcus… or because the film needs to fabricate a catharsis by wheeling her back in at a later point in the plot.

Marcus buys a gun, but he’s not quite sure why he bought it. He’s repeatedly busted for this and that as he grows up. The film doesn’t bother to deal with these various busts one way or another, except to use them simply as a rather unimaginative device for marking the time until he starts running drugs for Majestic (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who was far more fascinating as the psychotic Adebisi in HBO’s “Oz” series). Majestic teaches a number of the dealers about making crack. However, he and his boss, Levar (Bill Duke), have a running policy that the dealers are not to get hooked on it. Funny how that works.

Eventually, of course, Marcus runs into Charlene as an adult and, of course, they start dating. What’s interesting is that Charlene, a rather well-adjusted, responsible adult, doesn’t at any time ask herself what the hell she’s doing with a guy who gets shot at by Colombian drug dealers and drives a car far too expensive for someone who, aside from the drug dealing of which she’s initially unaware, doesn’t seem to have any sort of day job whatsoever. But then, this movie isn’t about asking important questions.

For example, the film only skims the surface of an interesting subplot when the Marcus’ sidekick and future manager, Bama (Terrence Howard), notes the absurdity of contractual terms being offered by Blackskull Records by way of their indentured serv—er, recording artist—Dangerous (Michael Miller). How ironic, one wonders. I was hoping the film might actually dissect the exploitation of black youth by the recording industry, but then this is a collaboration between MTV, Interscope and Dr. Dre.

Trite as it may seem, there’s one scene in which the TV shows clips of a younger John Kerry and the Iran-Contra controversy. The film never really dives into either the political or social climates of the day which contributed to the collective ignorance of inner city violence, drug culture and youth caught in the crossfire of both. I’m not expecting it to, I’m just wondering: Why even attempt to introduce such statements only to abruptly abandon them for fear that any weighty issues might damage the film’s mass-market appeal?

There are reversals upon reversals of fortune yet, unsurprisingly, the story keeps returning to its vapid center—Marcus’ absolutist view that he must strive to be incredibly rich or resign himself to total poverty.

Director Jim Sheridan and writer Terrence Winter recycled the semi-autobiographical tone of “8 Mile” and the urban warfare of “Boyz N’ the Hood” or “New Jack City,” yet these are greater films not just because their respective subjects are dealt with more sincerely and with greater passion, but also because 50 Cent rarely shows more than one emotion—morbidity—and insincerely so. He seems so much more relaxed when he’s not trying to look serious. As much as it would do him some good, smiling more often might hurt his street credibility.

After the movie, I left with maybe five cards of notes. That’s how empty the story felt. The only real substance in this otherwise cliché-ridden film (Does a truce between the Colombians and Levar’s gang get broken?) lies in Terrence Howard’s and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s performances and characters. Howard has a certain swagger that reminds me of the streetwise, casual wit of Fenster (Benicio Del Toro) in “The Usual Suspects.” Akinnuoye-Agbaje reprises a whiff of his psychotic convict in Oz. The film isn’t terrible, but these performances aren’t enough to elevate it from the mediocre regurgitation that it is.

Yes, we all know there are minorities with father commitment problems and drugs on the streets and “gangstas” keeping the streets unsafe for children. I’m sure the kids in those situations need to be reminded of the lack of positive male role models their communities… and by role models I mean accessible, pragmatic ones—i.e. not Michael Jordan or, for that matter, 50 Cent. Then again, as I noted before, these movies and this mythology are being marketed mostly to suburban, white kids rather than urban minorities. So, again, did this movie cover any ground that hasn’t been covered before? No. Did it need to get made? Only as much as we need a sequel to “Catwoman.”

There’s a scene where Marcus and Charlene have moved into a house of their own. It’s not much but, frustrated with Marcus’ apparent abdication of his interest in rapping, Charlene asks if the life they’re living is all there is. That’s a rather simplistic way of looking at the situation. Since the director clearly wants the film to be a vehicle for some kind of message, Marcus could have been a more complex individual grappling with more than just two choices in life. The film doesn’t provide—for instance—an impression of what kind of grades Marcus had in school, but it could have. That would have established a character with myriad issues and options rather than the paint-by-numbers “inner city kid with no hope” plot.

This movie could have been far more visceral and inspiring as a story about a guy who works a respectable job and makes his music on his terms without commercial aspirations, and breaks the shackles of the system by refusing the temptation to sign his rights away to industry vultures in a bad recording contract.

Life for urban youth is not merely a choice between poverty and wealth, anonymity and fame. There are many shades in between, but doing a story about a hard-working guy who raps on the side as an independent artist with truly creative, non-commercial aspirations would run entirely contrary to the social myths and stereotypes which keep MTV and the recording industry continuously supplied with consumer drones.

In that sense, Levar was wrong.

Get Rich or Die Tryin’ • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • Running Time: 134 minutes • MPAA Rating: R for strong violence, pervasive language, drug content, sexuality and nudity. • Distributed by Paramount Pictures