Nothing encapsulates ''Get Rich or Die Tryin' '' better than the notorious billboard image of star Curtis ''50 Cent'' Jackson with a gun in one hand and a microphone in the other. It was a bad idea to promote that likeness near schools, but it certainly tells you everything you need to know about the film it advertises.

More inspired by than closely following hard-core rapper Jackson's chaotic life from drug dealer to music superstar, ''Get Rich'' is a motion picture with one foot in artistic expression and one in pulp fiction and commercialized violence.

Efficiently written by Terence Winter, an Emmy winner for his work on ''The Sopranos,'' ''Get Rich'' starts with the most famous incident in Jackson's life: getting shot nine times but living to tell the tale.

''Get Rich'' is so determined to make us understand the childhood that molded the man that it flashes back to 15 or 20 minutes of it, with Marc John Jeffries as young Marcus, a boy who idolizes his gorgeous drug-dealing mother (Serena Reeder) only to be crushed when she is murdered.

By the time Jackson takes over the role, Marcus may love rap, but he is also so into the thug life that he's happy to say, ''I'm a gangster, Grandpa, and proud of it.'' Following his mother into the drug-dealing business, which soon moves from cocaine to the more lucrative crack, Marcus becomes a rising criminal star dreaming the American dream of money and success.

This is the seen-it-before stuff of 1930s gangster movies turned inside out, with the gangster not the charismatic villain but the good guy who triumphs at the end. Much of ''Get Rich's'' situations and lines are awfully shopworn, but Sheridan's direction concentrates on teasing the reality out of the overly familiar.

This delicate balancing act between dramatic realism and overworked genre material works for a time. Its first sign of faltering is in Marcus' relationship with his girlfriend, Charlene (nicely played by Joy Bryant). It's never completely clear why Charlene easily and unapologetically accepts Marcus' ultra-violent lifestyle.

Past a certain point, the brutality that is an essential part of ''Get Rich's'' story overstays its welcome. The cycle of violence repeats itself so many times, with endlessly repetitive shootings and stabbings, not to mention shots of hot women in various stages of exposure, that the film's inability to resist the lure of maximum exploitation becomes frustrating.GO!

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