Shot with grandma’s camcorder on what appears to be a budget of several hundred dollars,Before I Self-Destruct, which 50 also wrote, produced and executive-produced, casts Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson as Clarence, a man once heralded as potentially the greatest basketball player of all time. Then he hurt his knee and was reduced to working at a grocery store to support his mother and younger brother, a 12 year old genius who’s been accepted to a slew of Ivy League schools before hitting his teens. Seriously. 50’s character seems to have just graduated from high school, which is odd, considering the actor playing him is clearly in his mid-30s. Oh well, if a 12 year old can go to Harvard then why shouldn’t a 34 year old act like his high school glory days had just ended?
When their saintly mother is killed, 50 gets a job killing a whole bunch of motherfuckers for veteran character actor Clifton Powell, the token “actor” in the cast. 50 proves very adept at the job, at which point the film alternates between scenes of 50 blasting giant holes in fools with a shotgun and gratuitous sex scenes. Sometimes 50 combines sex and violence, like when he’s assigned to kill a sexy lesbian, but not until after she’s done having hot, lesbiany lesbian sex with a fellow lesbian. Eventually, 50 gives his heart to a woman. This proves his downfall. The moment 50 told his girlfriend, “I love you” (a line that drew audible gasps from a crowd that, to be fair, gasped and hooted and tittered early and often) everyone knew his death was imminent.
