As much as any of the other ingredients the movie is also a love story with a sweet core that’s inside the prison fights, group sex parties, and gun battles that are primarily the recaps of the detoured rap career of Curtis Jackson, or 50 Cent.

The two hour long movie is also about the misguided entrepreneurial spirit that saw many young men and women in the nation’s cities turn to an outlaw thug life and made their way with an alternative economy.

Talk of “employes of the month” of the drug enterprises they run and increasing their yield and product supply lines offers an overall technical view of the outlaw drug trade that hasn’t much been seen since Nino Brown’s NYC city block fortress operation in “New Jack City” with Wesley Snipes and Chris Rock in his first film. They’re back to talking about yet another play at making a sequel to that movie.

Drug dealing isn’t presented as a glorious occupation, but the hedonistic lifestyles are depicted. “Gettin’ paid and gettin’ laid” is what they’re into, Marcus says, narrating throughout the film.

“After figuring the hours spent outside selling, it came to minimum wage” Marcus muses for us.

“If you figure in going to prison it was less than that,” he states, which is what fuels his interest in becoming a rapper.

The kingpin of their underworld empire is Cahill, played by director and onetime action star Bill Duke from “Predator” and “Commando.” Duke, director Forest Whitaker in "A Rage In Harlem" with Robin Givens and Gregory Hines, also had a small role as a corrupt detective in the Hughes twins excellent but heartbreaking “Menace II Society.”

“Violence only begets more violence. It does not beget more money. Which is what I thought we were all in this for,” Cahill says after Marcus and his crew breaks the negotiated peace treaty with the Colombians, with his low growling whisper and bowler hat making one think of Don Corleone in “The Godfather,” which had to be intentional because it could have been easily avoided.

Joy Bryant was a model before she burst on the scene as the love interest in Denzel Washington’s “Antwon Fisher“ opposite Derek Luke of “Spartan.” She, just as since broken out actresses such as Kerry Washington and Sonaa Lathan, usually plays the Girlfriend role as she did in Jessica Alba’s “Honey.”

Bryant is way too scrawny to be featured as an object of male adoration, but as Charlene, a blast from Marcus’ past she has a sweet and smart demeanor about herself. After a reenactment in the film of the famous near-assassination where 50 cent was shot nine times but survived, Charlene is worried about Marcus’ deteriorating mental state and spirit.

“I’m afraid I’m losing him” she confides to one of their mutual friends,” as Marcus mopes around the house in his house robe and slippers, watching TV, his drive to make music all but gone.

“This place, this life, is this it for us?” Charlene says as she reads Marcus out when she sees his ambition has drained.

“All I see in you now is a weak person. Your son is just another little Black boy without a father to look up to!”

“Get Rich Or Die Tryin” is notable for a few reasons, aside from the fact that the director is an Irishman known for Academy Award-winning films such as “My Left Foot” and the prison film “In The Name of the father.” That movie was also fact-based about a wrongly imprisoned father and son who became cellmates in prison.

There are many parallels between the Irish in the United Kingdom and Africans in America, so having a director from there made as much sense as it did when having one of the Hughes twins make the period film “From Hell” about Jack the Ripper starring Johnny Depp as an investigator of one of history’s most mysterious serial killers.

Hughes said it was just another type of ghetto, although an older one. And he was right, and the movie was critically praised but more importantly it made the studio some money!

“Get Rich Or Die Tryin’” holds dark-skinned Black women as objects of beauty in a variety of roles, whether its his young unwed mother Katrina, played by Serena Reeder, or just the hanging-around girls. The Video Hoes and other eye candy with the light skin and long hair have been largely banished from the film, with the exception of Bryant.

The young actor who plays the young Marcus Grier is excellent, and better than his adult version played woodenly in spoken scenes by Jackson. Often slurring his lines, Jackson was more in the mode of behaving, which was said of Ice Cube in his early film roles.

What makes “Get Rich Or Die Tryin’” a success is that it has such a wide range of characters and situations to help 50 Cent out so he doesn’t have to carry the weight of the film on his less than capable shoulders.

There is the romantic and rap career subplots, but there is the brief prison portion, and the flashback to Marcus’ youth with a beautiful and popular drug dealing mother and his fruitless search for a father. For action and suspense the battle for drug territory against the NYC Colombians, with jealous backstabbers watching and waiting to strike.

Terrence Howard is back in thug form again after his Oscar-buzz worthy role as a West Memphis pimp and aspiring rapper in “Hustle And Flow.” Here he is ‘Bama, Marcus’ agent and Ghetto Consiglieri.

“Is that where you from, Alabama?” Marcus asks him.

“Naw, I’m from North Carolina. But I didn’t want people calling me ‘Lina!”

With such a sprawling film with a cast of dozens Howard’s screen time was limited but he always makes the best of it, as he did in “Dead Presidents” and “Crash.” Howard has played nerdy high school students in films like “Sunset Park” and “Mr. Holland’s Opus.”

Most recently Howard furthered demonstrated his versatility by playing a Detroit detective in “Four Brothers” and a second-generation thug lifer in the upcoming “Animal” with co-star and producer Ving Rhames. Professor Griff from the group Public Enemy screened that film in the mode of “South Central” and “Menace II Society” at the Rave in a recent visit to Milwaukee and a Cinema View of it is coming soon.

Rappers transitioning from music to acting is nothing new, in fact its a proven career upgrade path. some of the bigger names are Queen Latifah, moving more to using her real name of Dana Owens; Will Smith, formerly the Fresh Prince; LL Cool J; Ice T, or Tracey Morrow from “Johnny Mnemonic” and “Surviving The Game,” and now playing a cop on series TV; Treach (“Jason’s Lyric”) and both Xibit and Rza in the current suspense film “Derailed.”

A companion video for showing after viewing “Get Rich” would be the most excellent “In Too Deep,” the fact based story of a undercover officer portrayed by Omar Epps who rises to the upper reaches of a drug empire led by LL Cool J. There is a romantic angle with co-star Nia Long with Epps.

Those who thought they’d be treated to a movie with lots of concerts and rap will be struck by how little of that aspect there is in “Get Rich Or Die Tryin’.” but they won’t feel or be cheated by what they will see in a movie that although it deals with unpleasant subject matter and unwholesome realities of our cities and the Underclass, nevertheless is a well crafted and executed film by a director who has proven that he has what it takes, and is backed up by a capable cast.

GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN’ is rated a well deserved “R” for violence including shootings and torture, drug use and dealing, male frontal nudity, and old style sexual throw-downs with mutual... whatever.

-- kevin j. walker
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milwaukee wis. usa 53201>
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