Hustle & Flow | Review

Brewer’s uneasy road to the top shines, and then – disappoints.

Matching urban landscape with ghetto attitude, this is an offering much like that of 8 Mile where rapping, rhyming about survival and hard times on the streets ultimately lead to some form of salvation. While Craig Brewer’s rags-to-something better tale offers the grittiness and docudrama aesthetic that reflect a realism of a run-down piece of America as best exemplified by David Gordon Green’s contemporary pieces of Americana, Hustle & Flow benefits from an actor in supreme form but is hindered by a narrative that falls into the neatly tied-up and hope-filled ending syndrome.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, in this blackened piece of America there is not much hope, and pimping is not vocation that will bring about early-retirement for those involved. Taking on a formula that sees the narrative walk a mile in the shoes of its protagonist, the film is littered with characters coming off a lot more contrived than expected, but in Terrence Howard’s calibrated performance as the film’s centerpiece – we feel the heart and sweat of an ugly person trying to break away. An especially strong sequence is the focal point of the film in DJay visits a neighbor and puts aside his differences for the sake of an opportunity.

Brewer crafts this urban film with so much care – even the story’s middle point of a freestyle recording session of the hit song is a likeable process for the viewer, but sometimes the grim realties depicted in storyline are flattened by attempt of sweetening of the plot – the good luck memento and indoor picnics seem a little too much considering the poverty and the ugliness that the household lives in. While the presence of the supporting players is annoying to the process, they don’t deter from this Benicio Del Toro-like look from Howard who gives the powerfully subdued gritty and emotional raw performance with his style and speech. Actress Taryn Manning with a Holly Hunter voice is also a high note for this film as the pimp’s protégée but when the film explores other worlds it feels less personal and less desperate thus losing the gritty momentum it worked itself as in the beginning.

The choice in locations emphasize the themes of desperation in the film and the use of super-impositions nicely turns the pages of life in this Sundance hit, but the introduction of a non-traditional resolution in the film’s final act, is a little too self-serving. Precisely when the protagonist pulls his dreams from the toilet you can’t help but feel that they had it right with one shot – which they didn’t have to show what was in the toilet but rather held onto the shot on his face instead of going through the motions and turn into the picture-perfect ending. The film sounds good, and Hustle & Flow is a potential platinum record if Paramount Classics markets the film right, but when rawness gets replaced by an urban fairytale formula – this viewer can’t help but think what if?

Rating 2 stars