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Film
Opens Wednesday: A film's second billing: itself
By STEVE PERSALL
Published November 3, 2005
It isn't often that advertising upstages the movie it's promoting. That seems to be the case with Get Rich or Die Tryin' after billboards for the film recently created a hubbub in Los Angeles.
The artwork for this semi-autobiography of rap superstar 50 Cent (nee Curtis Jackson) shows him from behind, arms outstretched with a microphone in one fist and a gun in the other. Community watchdogs protested the alleged glorification of violence, especially after a Get Rich or Die Tryin' sign was displayed near a public school. Paramount Pictures judiciously chose to remove the offending sign but refused to change the image in others.
Such outrage may not be necessary. Director Jim Sheridan, a 56-year-old white Irishman, may bring a keen outsider's perspective to this gritty tale of a criminal going fairly straight - 50 Cent still has brushes with the law - through music. Sheridan likes social rabble-rousers, as In the Name of the Father and The Boxer proved in overseas settings, and In America showed he could find surprising emotions in downbeat situations. He should lift 50 Cent's story above the usual gangsta drama, to somewhere approaching Hustle & Flow earlier this year.
Get Rich or Die Tryin' opens nationwide Wednesday. A review will be published that day on page 2B in the St. Petersburg Times.
- STEVE PERSALL, Times film critic
[Last modified November 2, 2005, 12:06:07]
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