Directed by Jim Sheridan. Starring Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Terrence Howard. Rated 18A. Now playing at the Silvercity Metropolis, the Colossus Langley, and others

John Lennon took five bullets, and look where it got him. Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson took nine and it's like nobody shot him. Peaceniks finish last. The winner stars in an MTV-style semiautobiographical film-scenes of the bloodletting included. The result is Get Rich or Die Tryin', an intriguingly grim apologia of the Queens-born Cent's journey, through his character of Marcus, from a life of hard-core crime to his musical salvation. The way director Jim Sheridan tells it, the trip was so violent it made Eminem's 8 Mile look like 2 Blocks.

Told in flashback after his assault and before Cent got a leg up from Shady and Dr. Dre, Get Rich or Die Tryin' juxtaposes Marcus's obsessive money hunger and gang dynamics with his yearnings for his murdered mother, absent father, and childhood sweetheart. In this, his first film, Cent is supported by a stellar cast that includes Terrence Howard as his nutso, self-appointed protector, Lost's Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as venally charismatic drug lord Majestic, and Joy Bryant as the Girl.

It's fitting that The Sopranos scribe Terence Winter wrote the script. So, too, that Sheridan, director of Troubles-themed films like The Boxer, Bloody Sunday, and In the Name of the Father, turned to the 'hood, post-IRA disarmament, in pursuit of his recurrent film themes: urban warfare and the importance of a man getting a second kick at the can. Pity he fawned over his leading thug. Here, Marcus is really just a peach with an adorable grin who likes sunsets and strolls on the beach and who cries in front of his girlfriend. Jackson's ability to completely alter his facial expression in these moments-from murderous, armed-robbery-committing motherfucker to bashful, lost little boy-suggests a chillingly easy duplicity ("Who, me, officer?") perfected on the streets.

Does the film glorify violence? Ask the Pittsburgh man who got gunned down at a screening. Oh, wait, we can't. He's dead. Any tale of a scumbag's redemption necessarily includes "before" footage. But in Get Rich, the cop-killing, gun battles, drug-turf bloodbaths, and teeth being yanked out with pliers are perpetrated with a disquieting level of bravura. A knife fight in a prison shower, sending naked inmates floundering over the wet, soapy floor to avoid having their genitals filleted, left me open-mouthed. By the time a sexy Cent rapped over the closing credits, I was too frigid with revulsion to appreciate either his pecs or the lyrical proof of his rebirth.