10 Movies Like 8 Mile
It’s crazy to think that 8 Mile is over twenty years old now, as it was released back in November of 2002. 8 Mile walked away with Best Original Song in early 2003 at the Oscars. An award event that its star, Eminem, was not at to accept because he apparently was at home asleep.
There are many attempts in show business where a music artist crosses over into movies, and sometimes it fails. When hip-hop superstar Eminem did it, expectations were exceeded for the audience.
Most people thought Eminem would be great, but not as great as he ended up being. Yeah, you can argue he is playing a version of himself as a young rapper with aspirations of getting out of the rough side of Detroit. But you try paying yourself in a movie, it’s not easy.
8 Mile is also aided by great writing, direction, and an awesome supporting cast that includes Brittany Murphy, Mekhi Phifer, and Anthony Mackie. Hip-hop music has been a hard thing to put on screen over the years.
The culture is never really portrayed correctly. 8 Mile isn’t a biopic of a hip-hop artist trying to make it and then gets lucky and becomes a superstar. It actually does the right thing by playing it safe. It’s more about a week in the life of someone who maybe deserves more than their circumstances. Let’s now take a look at 10 films that compare quite well to 8 Mile.
Notorious
Let’s start off with a biopic of one of the greatest artists in hip-hop of all time, The Notorious B.I.G. The Biggie biopic, titled Notorious, was released in early 2009 to mixed reviews. It is a film that hits some of the same beats as 8 Mile, but obviously with a larger-than-life character at the forefront of it.
It needs to squeeze a lot into its two-hour run time. Biggies escapes from a life of crime, his chance encounter with ‘Sean P.Diddy’ Combs, and then the tragedy of all that catches up to him. Biggie’s music appears in 8 Mile as music playing on a tape deck in a car. 8 Mile takes place at a time when he was a prominent voice in hip-hop. It also should be mentioned that Antony Mackie appears in both this film and 8 Mile. In Notorious, he plays a friend turned foe to Biggie, Tupac Shakur.
Beat Street
Back in the early 1980s, hip-hop music and culture were still very new to the world. Beat Street was released in 1984 and was one of the first movies about artistic expression in the inner city. It’s about two friends who both have hopes of showcasing their talents outside of their neighborhoods in the Bronx.
By chance, they meet a choreographer in an upscale New York City nightclub who offers them a chance to perform on television. Beat Street and 8 Mile both share a commonality in having protagonists who are from the supposed wrong side of the tracks. They get a shot to elevate their dreams a bit, but they aren’t films about achieving fame and fortune.
Breakin
In a weird way, Breakin and 8 Mile share a commonality. They both have a subplot of chasing ones dreams, but they also dive a bit into the realm of West Side Story in terms of their being rival gangs in the movie.
Breakin is a bit cringe-worthy in its delivery, with the 1980s cheese factor being turned up high. Still, it’s an 80s cult classic about a jazz dancer who discovers some street dancers and decides to join up with them to help them battle a rival group of street dancers. A lot of “dance-off”s” go down in Breakin. 8 Miles famous rap battle scenes are oddly in the same vein, if you think about it.
Breakin is an early role for rapper Ice-T, who plays the MC known as Rap Talker. And if you look closely in a few scenes, you can spot Jean Claude Van Damme having fun at a dance off, as he was an extra in the film.
Tupac: Resurrection
Although Tupac: Resurrection is a documentary, it deserves to be on this list. It would release nearly a year after 8 Mile in 2003. Eminem’s first acting role in a movie was such a success that it did begin to pave the way for other stories to be told in this genre, even if they were in documentary form. It’s a magnificent doc about rapper Tupac Shakur and his upbringing by his Black Panther-affiliated mother, who was pregnant with him in jail.
It follows his meteoric rise to fame as an artist and his untimely death in a shooting in 1996. Eminem made a lot of contributions to the soundtrack of the documentary. He produced four songs for it. One of which is the song “Running (Dying to Live)”. A track that unites both slain rappers, Biggie and Tupac.
CB4
For a change of pace, let’s bring in the Chris Rock-led comedy CB4. By 1993, someone had to come along and parody hip-hop culture; Chris Rock had to be the one to do it. CB4 is about a group of rappers who are trying to make their way up the ranks of the entertainment industry to become superstars, but a nightclub owner they burned is on their trail looking for payback.
Rock’s character, MC Gusto, is clearly supposed to be spoofing Easy E. And then the group as a whole is basically a spoof of N.W.A. The movie kind of feels like the hip-hop version of This is Spinal Tap.
Get Rich or Die Tryin
Within months of the release of 8 Mile, we would then see the arrival of rapper 50 Cent on the scene with his hit song, “In da Club.” 50 Cent was a protege of Dr. Dre and Eminem, and with their backing, he shot to superstardom very quickly. The rapper’s personal life was surrounded by drama. He was shot nine times in May of 2000 and lived. He was a former hustler on the street. He had feuds with other gangster-like characters who had ties to the music industry.
All of this made for a great story to tell in the first ever film he starred in, Get Rich or Die Tryin. In it, he plays Marcus, a character who lives a life very similar to his. And although those similarities aren’t pulling the wool over anyone’s eyes, Get Rich or Die Tryin is kind of an entertaining watch. It’s a different kind of watch than 8 Mile. But once again, it’s another movie that was very doable due to 8 Mile’s success.
Bodied
Eminem would produce this 2017 comedy-drama about the world of underground battle rapping. As most of us remember, 8 Miles’s most standout moments are the rap battle scenes. Sequences where two men poetically insult one another for credibility. Bodied is a movie that centers completely on that, as it follows a grad student who doesn’t seem to belong in that world but makes his way into it by accident. Bodied battle scenes are shot a lot like 8 Miles, up close and in your face. They are a little more fast-paced, but they are still a treat to watch.
Whiplash
Whiplash was one of the more memorable films of the last ten years. A film about an ambitious young jazz drummer played by Miles Teller. As he sets a goal for himself to be the greatest drummer in his music conservatory at school, he clashes with his tough-as-nails instructor, played by J.K. Simmons. Simmons would go on to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor that year. And rightfully so; he is a vicious, mean, hard-nosed music instructor who is cut throat to his students.
Whiplash tackles a lot of different themes, one of which shares a kinship with 8 Mile. Both films have to do with the consequences of pursuing your dreams. 8 Mile and Whiplash have a pace to them that isn’t about two guys trying to be number one, and everything else gets out of the way for that. They both are met with conflict, obstacles, and hardship, not just in their pursuit but in everyday life.
Hustle & Flow
8 Mile walked so Hustle & Flow could run. With 8 Mile’s Oscar win for Original Song a few years earlier, it opened the flood gates for films like this to get made and even go as far as something like Hustle & Flow did. Rap group Three 6 Mafia would take home the Oscar for Original Song that night for their song, “It’s Hard Out Here For a Pimp.”
As for the film, Hustle & Flow is about a street hustler in Memphis who has a crisis of character and must find new meaning in life. He reconnects with an old friend, and the two cut a hip-hop mix tape together in hopes of getting it into the hands of a successful rapper from the area who was going to be in town soon. Terrance Howard would pick up an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his role in the movie.
Purple Rain
Although Purple Rain and 8 Mile differ in the genres of music that they are portraying to the audience, they share similarities in a few others. For starters, when you think of two mega stars at the time who crossed over from music to movies, very few have done it better than Prince in Purple Rain and Eminem in 8 Mile. They both utilized their mega-stardom at their respective times and took the risk of a transition that could hurt their careers, but it only elevated it more.
Purple Rain and 8 Mile are both definitive movies of the times they were made in terms of music-centered movies. Neither solely focused on its protagonist trying to make it big, but rather their environment and what stands in their way, and if they’ll ever overcome it. Lastly, the two films have iconic songs from the leads of the respective films that are still sung to this day.
So there we have it, our 10 Movie picks to keep you busy after watching 8 Mile.
What do you think of our picks? Do you agree? Are there any notable omissions? Let us know in the comments below!