Movie Review: Hustle & Flow

Hustle & Flow is up for two Oscars (actor and song), and if it wasn't for that I probably never would have seen it. Terrence Howard plays DJay, a Memphis pimp and drug dealer, who isn't really loving life. He lives with three of his prostitutes, one of whom is pregnant and another has a baby, and there's a lot of yelling. His life is going no where and to prove it to us he has one of those conversations about life that's just crap.

While meeting up with a friend he is brought to tears listening to a beautiful hymn sung in church. Now he wants to make a hip hop album. The middle of the film is that process and it's good. You see the songwriter, producer, muscian and singer all add to the process. You see how a perfect take where the singer is "in the mode" can be ruined by a bad microphone. And you see a pretty decent song get created. But really what you see here is what you didn't see in Brokeback Mountain. That film was about unfulfilled love, this film, at least the middle of the film is about someone finding a purpose in life and going for it. The film puts the point in the script, "everybody gotta have a dream" or "every man has the right, the goddamn right, to contribute a verse."

The movie might sound pretty formulaic at this point, down and out guy makes good, but it't not really. There were several scenes where the yelling and the screaming stops and the characters actually have a conversation about what they feel. There are also some fun lines. The musician is describing his day job restocking vending machines to Nola, one of DJay's prostitutes and the primary investor into the song. Her reaction is "and I thought my job sucked".

In the third act Skinny Black (Ludacris) a local boy who made it big as a rapper comes to town for a July 4th party. DJay tries to get him to listen to the demo tape they made. Seeing how DJay approaches this and what actually happens moves the film out of standard boy makes good fare but unfortunately a little closer to standard gangsta fare.

Howard's performance was very strong and for that reason I'm glad I saw it. The women in the film were treated pretty badly, but then again, so were the men. The movie has a heart, but in parts, not so much, and that's how I liked it. Mostly pretty good, but in parts not so much.