Get Rich or Die Tryin'
"Get Rich or Die Tryin'" is the acting debut of rapper 50 Cent. Under his given name, the decidedly non-gangsta Curtis Jackson, 50 plays an abridged version of himself: a Queens-born, drug-dealing thug turned hip-hop icon named Marcus.
On most levels his performance is as flat as his abs: very early Wahlberg.
The movie itself is a solid repackaging of the criminal back story that made 50 famous. Not even the star himself can be bothered to do much more than crack his amazing Kool-Aid smile. He is frequently caught giving his costars looks completely absent of emotional expression. He could be thinking. He could be on life support.
Sometimes, though, it's tempting to see this performance style as sneakily strategic. When he cries, as he does in one late scene, it's like an Old Testament miracle: Water seeps from the stone!
Narrating his own tale, 50 speaks in a babyish mumble only Mike Tyson could understand. In his music, that indistinct mutter is a clever instrument: Even when he's rapping about getting out of jail or plugging a hater, he sounds like he's doing it from the VIP lounge. Lazy articulation suits him there, especially because the rhymes are always helped along by irresistible beats.
But Dr. Dre didn't produce this movie, somebody else did.
One of those somebodies is the Irishman Jim Sheridan, who also directed "Get Rich." Sheridan is best known for making "My Left Foot" and the blistering IRA film "In the Name of the Father." 50's fans won't be disappointed with the filmmaking muscle Sheridan lends to this malarkey.
The story opens with the now-legendary assassination attempt on 50 -- make that Marcus -- then flashes back to the 1980s when he was a 12-year-old (Marc John Jefferies) on the mean streets of Queens. Marcus's mom (Serena Reeder) is a workaholic drug-slinger. His daddy, as he says in the narration, could have been anybody. When she's brutally slain, Marcus follows in his mother's occupational footsteps but never abandons his dreams of rap success.
As a young man, Marcus is determined to find out who killed his mother (he thinks the murderer is a Rick James look-alike) and desperate to know his father.
In the meantime, he joins a big drug family, run from afar by a Don Corleone-like kingpin (Bill Duke) with a smooth criminal named Majestic (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) as the nasty frontman. Following his first taste of success, Marcus buys a coveted white Mercedes-Benz that gleams like a freshly bleached tooth. He also moves into a warehouse and throws parties where each girl looks like a Jet magazine Beauty of the Week.
The usual shoot-outs and double-crosses ensue. There's also a trip to the pokey, where one grisly, naked shower shivving awaits. So does Terrence Howard, who already played a version of 50 Cent's part in "Hustle & Flow." As Marcus's keyed-up manager, he steals the movie.
To soften the fabric, the film throws Marcus a love interest named Charlene. She's his underwritten childhood sweetheart, and the lovely Joy Bryant makes the most of the role. But there's not much an actress can do with a character who scraps her upward mobility and dance career to be the wind beneath a bad boy's wings.
Bad as he is, the movie suggests that Marcus is surrounded by a lot worse. And so "Get Rich" details all that personal history to build back up to the incident that has made 50 Cent an urban legend: Marcus is shot nine times. To win our sympathy, we see his long convalescence. (Apparently, he's not bionic.)
This all seems a bid to clarify 50 Cent's thuggish reputation. But it's not that new. "Get Rich" is an all-American cautionary tale. In one early moment worthy of Edward G. Robinson, Marcus boasts, "I'm a gangsta, Grandpa, and I'm proud of it!"
Still, the movie takes care to show Marcus's betrayers and his boys doing most of the killing. The script is by Terence Winter, who's written several top episodes of "The Sopranos," and he appears to have had a good time turning 50 Cent's life into a collection of movie clichés meant to produce a myth.
Sheridan seems particularly smitten. The director likes his star immensely and has seen to it that this unpretty man is often exquisitely photographed. (Declan Quinn's jailhouse cinematography is especially, well, arresting.) Sheridan's embrace of urban life here picks up where his previous picture, "In America," left off. He doesn't seem to know he's working with ancient entertainment formulas. The rags turn to riches as if by Hollywood magic. Compared to "8 Mile," Curtis Hanson's fearsome inner-city portrait of the Detroit that produced Eminem, "Get Rich" feels almost fantastical.
Nonetheless, what's really problematic about "Get Rich or Die Tryin' " is 50's amazing grin. It makes the whole thing seem anticlimactic. Before we enter the theater, we know he's a millionaire winner starring in a movie about how he won. So it's hard to believe him when he isn't smiling.
When he is, it's even harder. He looks like he's gotten rich long before he almost dies trying.
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com.
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