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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