Since the critically acclaimed success of ‘8 Mile’, Eminem’s film debut, his once rap protégé 50 Cent is the next artist to jump straight into the deep end of acting, in a semi biographical movie entitled ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin’.

50 Cent’s very own venture into Hollywood was greeted by controversy after Samuel L. Jackson claimed he had turned down a role in the Jim Sheridan-directed movie when he learnt that Curtis ‘50 Cent’ Jackson had the lead. Samuel L. Jackson’s reasoning was his growing resentment of untrained rappers-come-actors. “I like listening to 50 Cent and I can groove to his music but I don’t want to groove to him on screen, just yet,” commented the ‘Shaft’ star. “Maybe if he does five movies and he shows some talent. I mean, how does he get to work with Jim Sheridan and I don’t? What is it about 50 Cent that makes Jim Sheridan say, ‘I’d really like to make a movie with him’?”

50 hit back in an interview with the New York Daily News, saying: “I don’t even see where Samuel fits into my life story anyway, unless he plays one of the crackheads. He was a crackhead originally, right? So I come from being a rapper, and he comes from being a crackhead.”

With all the press attention surrounding 50 Cent’s movie debut I was delighted to be invited to an advance screening of  ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin’, hosted by the BFM Film Club at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Although many people would for obvious reasons focus on Fifty’s acting, I was equally concern in the approach of Irish centric director, Jim Sheridan. A six-time Oscar nominee, Sheridan is to Irish filmmaking what Spike Lee and Woody Allen are to Black and Jewish filmmaking, and his body of work to date includes ‘In the Name of the Father’ and ‘In America’. So when it was first revealed that Jim Sheridan would be the director in charge of filming 50 Cent in his movie debut, I was slightly hesitant. Would the backdrop of New York be replaced with Boston? Would 50 Cent be replaced with Daniel Day Lewis? These questions were to be blown away emphatically after the screening.

‘Get Rich or Die Tryin’ is a hard-hitting drama, and features 50 Cent as Marcus, an aspiring rapper. Following the murder of his mother, Marcus turns to dealing crack for a living in an attempt to improve his standard of life. After a drug-related stint in prison, which sees him being saved from death by fellow inmate Bama (Terrence Howard), Marcus looks to rekindle his talent of rapping as a way forward. Together with the news that his girlfriend Charlene (Joy Bryant) is expecting their first child, Marcus leaves prison a changed man.

With Bama as his manager, Marcus’ attempts to go straight is put into jeopardy by his former crack dealer mentor, Majestic, (played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), who will now do anything to stop his fledgling rap career. Marcus’ frustration over Majestic’s meddling and the threat to his newborn son results in Marcus making mix tapes for the streets, picking apart Majestic’s once revered name. This leads to the cinematic variation of the real life attempted execution of Curtis Jackson. The final scenes follow Marcus as he overcomes the trauma of attempted murder, through his long rehabilitation as a human being first and as a rapper second. These last few scenes of the movie are as riddled with emotion as his body was once riddled with bullets.

Along with Curtis Jackson, there are good performances from Terrence Howard, Viola Davis (Grandma) and Sullivan Walker (Grandpa). However, Ashley Walters’ performance as Antwan, Marcus’ close friend, was somewhat jarring in terms of his Jamaican accent, although I understand Hollywood has always tended to dilute the Caribbean accents, which can leave it unpalatable to those of us with Caribbean heritage. Walters, (aka Asher D from So Solid), was at the advanced screening of the movie and after the preview, revealed how he had initially studied the New York accent in preparation for his character. But, it was only when he flew in to speak to Fifty about the role that he realised Antwan was Jamaican. He then went on to explain that the decision to make Antwan’s Jamaican accent more clear was not his making: “That’s the way of film; sometimes and they want it to be as universal as possible, and a lot of people aren’t in tune with the accent.”

Despite the flaw in accents, the focus is still going to be on 50 Cent’s acting debut. Yet, to some up his performance, I’m forced to refer back to a comment made by Samuel L. Jackson: “Anybody can go out there and be themselves, that’s fine, but at some point you’re going to be asked to go out there and be something else and that’s when it’s going to be time to go to work.”

‘Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ is in cinemas nationwide on January 20, 2006.

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