Susan Granger’s review of “Get Rich or Die Tryin'” (Paramount Pictures)
Rapper 50 Cent says he learned everything he needed to know to make it in the music business selling crack on the streets of Queens but that doesn’t necessarily make a good movie.
Billed under his birth name, Curtis Jackson, 50 Cent plays Marcus, a character much like himself, or at least his thug-life mythology. The story begins as he and his loyal buddy Bama (Terrence Howard) are pulling off a chaotic robbery. Then there’s a flashback to the 1970s when, as a young boy (Marc John Jeffries), he’s raised by his grandmother (Viola Davis) and her Caribbean-immigrant husband (Sullivan Walker). Fascinated by hip-hop, Marcus starts making music but, when he plays it for Charlene (Joy Bryant), her parents are horrified by sexuality of the words. Then his drug-dealing mother (Serena Reeder) is murdered. Time passes and when he sees Charlene again, he’s driving a new Mercedes, having become a rapper called Little Caesar. But soon he’s busted and sent to prison, where Bama saves his life. So much for plot. Who cares?
Directed by Jim Sheridan (“My Left Foot,” “In the Name of the Father,” “In America”), the quasi-authentic, simplistic screenplay, written by Terence Winter, evokes no coherent empathy for street-hardened Marcus. Unlike Eminem’s authentic “8 Mile” or Terrence Howard’s fictional “Hustle and Flow,” this gritty crime-and-rap saga is just romanticized, graphic gangsta violence. And, as an actor with a severely limited range, 50 Cent seems to struggle to convey even the most basic emotions in this vanity project. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Get Rich or Die Tryin'” is a muddled, trite 2. Even 50 Cent fans may be disappointed with his screen debut because there’s only a minute or two of actual concert footage accompanying the end credits.
