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Ghost Canyon

'Get Rich or Die Tryin'
(50 Cent, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, et al / DVD / R / (2005) 2006 / Paramount)

Overview: In 'Get Rich or Die Tryin', rapper Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson presents himself as a rap superhero, encased in muscular flesh like armor, his face impassive as a mask, reaching out to destroy his enemies with his unique talent. The plot, though based on Jackson's life, is standard - a gangster breaks from his youthful life of crime to triumph as a rapper - but there's vitality in the details: Jackson's girlfriend helps him pull free the wires holding his jaw shut when he's recovered from being shot in the face; a startling, brutal fight by naked men in a prison shower. Jackson even has his comic-book moment of transformation when a razor blade is thrown into his cell, encouraging him to kill himself; instead, he uses it to carve his rhymes into the walls.

DVD Verdict: Going into this film, I honestly thought this was supposed to be about a drug dealing rapper's rise to stardom,instead it was more about the feud between Marcus, Majestic and his cronies. The movie spends way too much time on this feud/hating from Majestic and doesn't really tell us much nor show us how much Marcus wanted this rap thing to work,it seemed almost like an afterthought at times. The movie was working for me strangely when he was a youth and showing the stuff he was going through that sort of molded him to what he became. When he became the adult 50 cent it started to get predictable and repetive in the story line. Like I knew that the Rick James character wasn't the murderer of his mother (too easy)I knew that the "bestfriend" girl would be waiting on him (after all these years) I knew she'd get pregnant for him..so and and so forth. We do get to see how intelligent his character is as well as him showing a sensitive side(he's not that "live wire" knuckle-head ... but actually thinks before doing certain things ... and he does have dreams of doing better in life). Bill Duke brings some authenticity in terms of acting to the role but didn't really have THAT much of a role. Same as Terrence Howard ... sort of wasted as great actors. The ending kind of fizzled out, it's like they were trying for it not to be predictable(as the middle of the movie started to get)so it kind of leaves you to your own thoughts on what happened ... but you kind of have that empty feeling that you were "duped" into watching it all the way through to get nothing. It's worth a watch overall, but it got too caught up in the dramatics. This is a Widescreen Presentation (1:85.1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs and comes with the Special Features of:

A Portrait of an Artist - The Making of 'Get Rich or Die Tryin'
Theatrical Trailer

www.paramount.com/homeentertainment





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