The Lazy Gangster’s Guide to Fame and Fortune

For 10 bucks plus change, you can now spend two hours in the company of 50 Cent, ne Curtis Jackson, the latest hip-hop MC to put down the mike and step in front of the camera. Alternately, you might spend that money on (used) copies of his hit albums, “Get Rich or Die Tryin'”and “The Massacre,” and spend an afternoon nodding your head to his lazy, seductive flow. I recommend the latter; if not exactly worthless, Mr. Cent’s big-screen debut keeps the lazy but fails to seduce. “Get Rich or Die Tryin'” comes on gangsta, but it’s as hollow and formulaic as any cornball slow jam.The story goes like this. It’s the 1980s in the South Bronx, and an ambitious little whippersnapper named Marcus (Marc John Jefferies) is besotted by hip-hop. With the encouragement of his mom, a foxy drug dealer named Katrina (Serena Reeder), Marcus hones his chops under the nom de flow Little Caesar. A nasty confrontation with rival Columbian hustlers leaves Marcus orphaned and jaded. Quicker than you can say, “Uplift the race!” he’s packing heat, slinging crack, and dreaming of stardom and revenge.What follows is a predictable rags-to-riches saga, ghetto-via-Hollywood style. Under the tutelage of a charismatic gangster named Majestic (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), Marcus (now played by Mr. Jackson) begins his rapid ascent through the underworld. With one eye on local rapper Dangerous (Michael Miller), and another on a gleaming new Mercedes, Marcus thugs his way through friction with the Columbians and rubs up against his childhood sweetheart Charlene (Joy Bryant).Those who know the saga of Cent know he survived being shot nine times, and “Get Rich or Die Tryin'” duplicates this detail bullet for bullet. Thus a fresh set of cliches arrives as Marcus is quasi-deified in a ludicrous resurrection/recovery sequence and struggles with morphine addiction, lack of inspiration, girl problems, fatherhood, and so on.The script, by “Sopranos” scribe Terence Winter, reads like Thug Life For Dummies. “I had it all,” Marcus mumbles in one of the dullest voiceovers in the history of cinema, “but still, something was missing.” Inspiration, perhaps?A case could be made that Mr. Jackson’s performance is a masterpiece of non-acting, as blank as anything in a Bresson movie. There’s so little there there it almost becomes interesting,but in the context of an ostensible crowd-pleaser, the lack of affect is a fatal flaw. Director Jim Sheridan (“My Left Foot,” “In America”) may well get rich off the movie, but he creatively dies trying to get a credible performance out of his star. Mr. Jackson’s shortcomings are thrown into greater relief by the vitality of the supporting cast, especially by the scene stealing Terrence Howard as a crazy inmate and the live-wire menace of Mr. Agbaje.Mr.Jackson does score points,at least for one segment of the audience, when he takes off his shirt and bares his behind – to say nothing of a naked prison melee soon to blow up the bandwidth of nude-celebrity Web sites. Or so I gather from the squeals of appreciation from numerous ladies present at the preview screening I attended. (Their camera phones, alas, were checked in with security.) But they, along with many others in the crowd, had nothing but giggles for Mr. Jackson’s try at deeper emotions, as when a pair of tears, carefully applied by the make-up department, rolled down his cheeks.Shed no tear for Mr. Cent. “Get Rich or Die Tryin'” is less embarrassing than utterly unremarkable. With his obligatory vanity project out of the way, he can get back to what he does best: violent self-mythologizing you can dance to.***The grid goes wrong in “Pulse,” a creepy, crafty parable about life and death in the Internet age by the diabolically talented Kiyoshi Kurosawa (“Cure,” “Bright Future”). A minor cause celebre amongst cinephiles and cult flick cognoscenti, the film was purchased by Miramax four years ago, then suppressed in favor of a proposed remake, yet to materialize, directed by Wes Craven.Post-“Red Eye,” I’m excited to see what Mr. Craven does with the material, though he could hardly impcelebre rove on the original’s fear factor, and will surely be obliged to jettison its cool, analytical tone. But “Pulse” proper is a must see, and indie distributor Magnolia Pictures is to be commended for wrestling the movie from limbo. Long available on import DVDs, this ingeniously designed movie needs every inch of the big screen and every available decibel to wreak havoc on your nervous system.Part ghost story, part apocalyptic art film, “Pulse” is the brainiest of those dread-inducing, slow motion Japanese horror films dubbed “J-Horror,” yet it belongs as much in the company of intellectual thrillers like “Videodrome,” “The Passenger,” or “Hidden” as genre exercises like “The Ring” or “The Grudge.”Metaphysical bad mojo seeps into the lives of several Japanese students after their computers begin streaming freaky video footage of hooded weirdos, scary suicides, and impossible surveillance angles. Low res has never been so high anxiety. Mr. Kurosawa makes mpegs horrific, Windows insidious, menacing tentacles from a tangle of wire.The sound design, by Makia Ika, is a tour de force of aural anxiety; in no other movie has the screech of a modem felt like the ineffable stirrings of a cyber Cthulhu. “Pulse” shows you fear in a handful of pixels.The origin of the signal is never fully explained, but a theory is posited: ghosts have run out of space in their dimension and started to infiltrate ours via computerized networks. While the notion may sound semi-credible to space-starved metropolitans, the backbeat of “Pulse” is absolute ambiguity. Scare effects notwithstanding – and this is one hell of a spooky movie – the chief pleasure of the film is its elusive allegorical grip.Call it a poem of loneliness masquerading as a techno-chiller; “Pulse” is the movie Antonioni might have made had be been born a Gen X Japanese. As the methodical narrative develops, circling its enigmas and trailing off on phantom tangents, the movie begins to empty out, until we’re left with a world in isolate ruin.The throbbing fear of “Pulse”finally has nothing to do with blurry apparitions in empty rooms, haunted computer viruses, or impelled suicide, but the gradual atomization of life in a global village, where everyone is online, but no one connects.

The Lazy Gangster’s Guide to Fame and Fortune

More from the New York Sun

Air Travelers at Mercy of Homeland Security Department After Suspension of Two Security Screening Programs

Putin’s ‘Hidden War’ Against Europe Underscores Dictatorships’ Rising Threat to the West

Treating 6-Year-Olds Like Infants Makes Children’s — and Parents’ — Lives Smaller

Death of French Rightist in Street Brawl Sparks Nation’s ‘Charlie Kirk Moment’

‘Effective Immediately’: Trump Raises Global Tariffs to 15 Percent Following Supreme Court Ruling

‘Hatred’ of Elon Musk Makes Jury Selection a Nightmare in San Francisco Courtroom

Huckabee Declares Israel Has Biblical Right to Middle East From Nile to Euphrates

Impasse Over Prosecutor Appointments Deepens With Firing of Second Judge-Chosen U.S. Attorney