Eminem At The Top Of His Underclass: 8 Mile

8 MILE, Eminem's big screen debut, is middling as far as boxing movies go: Not as searing as Budd Schulberg's The Harder They Fall, and not as funny as Tony Hendra and Ron Shelton's The Great White Hype. Its relentlessly grim Detroit setting--a city that appears to have all the economic and cultural opportunities of Kandahar--makes 8 Mile the hyper-realistic antithesis of the phony-baloney New Orleans of that other boxing musical, King Creole.