Image Courtesy of Amazon.com
Director:
Craig Brewer
Cast:
Terrence Howard……….DJay
Anthony Anderson……….Key
Taryn Manning……….Nola
Taraji P. Henson……….Shug
DJ Qualls……….Shelby
Paula Jai Parker……….Lexus
Elise Neal……….Yevette
Isaac Hayes……….Arnel
Ludacris……….Skinny Black
Jordan Houston……….Tigga
The Movie
The beauty of Hollywood is that in some cases there are topics, events and subjects that can be sanitized and made almost noble. With real life pimps chronicled already in the annals of Hollywood, most notably American Pimp, and fake ones being the heroes of blaxpoitation films of the 1970s, pimps and hoes are certainly not strangers to American Cinema. With rap music dominated the top 40 and underdog stories always being fashionable comes a story about a man who finds his inspiration through rap music and sets out to get in the game. He puts together a single with some odd fellows, produces a single with a catchy riff and pegs his hopes on a single event that he hopes will elevate him out of the ghetto and into superstardom. It was called 8 Mile, earned Eminem an Academy Award and critical acclaim. It wasn’t especially good but it cemented Eminem’s place at the forefront of the hip hop community. And in the same vein Terrence Howard steps into the role of DJay in Hustle & Flow.
DJay is a pimp and drug dealer who develops a dream of his own. He wants to be a rapper, much like the local hero who left and got big Skinny Black (Ludacris). To this end he recruits a top-notch producer (Anthony Anderson) to make the album, has one of his pregnant prostitutes (Taraji P. Henson) provides the soul of his song, is convinced to use pasty-white piano player Shleby (DJ Qualls) to lay down his background music and is supported all the while by his two working girls (Paula Jai Parker and Taryn Manning) and his marijuana sales. His dream is to make it big, to hear himself on the radio, and he builds everything up to one moment. Skinny is going to be in town over the 4th of July to rent out a bar in the old neighborhood owned by Arnel (Isaac Hayes), and DJay’s goal is to get him the tape and become a star because of it. You can almost cut and paste the storyline from 8 Mile, except with crunk music and a black protagonist, and wind up with Hustle & Flow. It evolves into finding that one big moment where DJay is supposed to shine.
And that’s what the movie’s main focus is, an attempt at building up to one big climactic moment. The problem is that DJay is sanitized too much from his real life counterparts in order to make him likeable. He’s believable as DJay the man but his character isn’t. He’s too nice, too less of an actual pimp and more like a kindly roommate to his hoes. A pimp doesn’t cry or stop to hug one of his subordinates, or passionately kiss his best worker before the big showdown at Arnel’s. His character feels lifted out of Pretty Woman with dialogue that could be off a TGIF staple. Howard is great, his character is likeable, but he’s too toned down from his real life counterparts to be realistic. It makes for great drama but the only sort of reaction it has is an eye-rolling feel to it; he’s too sanitized and clean even for a pimp.
Brewer seems to know that this is Howard’s shot at an Oscar and seems to frame nearly every scene around this very fact. Craig Brewer designs nearly every shot around getting Howard to look his very best and provide him an award-ceremony level highlight reel. It’s so prevalent that it becomes pandering on the level that a dramatic Jim Carrey performance becomes. Howard is masterful but at the same time he is an underdog that is too clean to be realistic. If there’s one lesson to be learned from a movie like American Pimp or Iceberg Slim’s book Pimp it is that the realities of a pimp are hard to ignore when faced with reality.
Hustle & Flow is a star-making performance from Terrence Howard and does feature quality music, but the departure from reality is almost too much to bear. This isn’t a believable character for us to root behind; it’s almost obligatory that his duties of pimp-slapping and money-taking are eliminated in order for to be a likeable underdog. This is the crunk version of 8 Mile and has about just as much quality too it.
Score : 7.5 / 10
The Video
Hustle & Flow is presented in a widescreen format and has a great color transfer.
The Audio
The film is presented with a Dolby Digital surround sound and sounds magnificent.
The Extras
Behind The Hustle is a featurette about the making of the film. With a lot of tidbits about the film, the focus of this featurette is on the characters and their relation to the audience. There’s an interesting sidebar with Howard learning to rap from the Three 6 Mafia that’s amusing, as Howard is more of a soft rock fan and he thought he could be a singer as opposed to a rapper. The featurette runs around 26 minutes and goes through the principles of the cast and how they all came aboard with candid commentary from Brewer as well as producer John Singleton about it all.
By Any Means Necessary runs around 14 minutes and focuses on the struggle to get the film made from the perspective of the cast and crew. Focusing on how they were able to secure the funds and talent to get the film made, it’s an interesting look at how this film got made and how many people passed on the film before it eventually got made. Singleton talks about trying to get the film made with Brewer’s race (he’s white) making it more difficult as well as the difficulty with DJay’s profession making it hard to come up with financing until Singleton came up with the cash himself to get the film made.
Creatin’ Crunk follows the creative process involved with the music itself as Singleton and Brewer introduce many of the background musicians from Memphis, several whom who he worked with Isaac Hayes for the Shaft theme song. Running around 13 minutes, it’s a detailed look at how they were able to create the sound for the film. With rapper Al Kapone supplying the actual song Howard sings in the film, it’s interesting to see how they were able to bring out the authenticity with the music as well as amusing how Kapone “hustled” his way on to the film.
Memphis Hometown Premiere is a five minute featurette that follows the cast and crew at the premier in Memphis with some comments by them about filming in Memphis, et al.
Score : 7.5 / 10
