Hustle and Flow

Great story, great music, and great acting. What more could you want?

I was, as expected, highly impressed with this movie. The story itself seemed so real that by the end of the film I was convinced it had to be based on a real-life rapper’s rise to fame, but director Craig Brewer created the characters and storyline himself. A middle-aged Memphis pimp, DJay (brilliantly portrayed by Terrence Howard), suddenly finds that he wants more out of life than sitting by the roadside pimping out prostitutes from his car. He has a chance encounter with an old high school friend, Key (Anthony Anderson), who works as a self-employed recording engineer and takes DJay with him to a recording session of a church choir. DJay is so moved by the singer’s powerful performance that he finally realizes his only way out of his current life is to rap. He alone believes in himself at first, but convinces Key, an aspiring musician named Shelby (DJ Qualls), and some of his prostitutes that he has the latent talent to make a legitimate album. All of this revolves around an upcoming visit to Memphis by big-time rap superstar, Skinny Black (Ludacris), whom DJay hopes will pull some strings in the music industry after hearing DJay’s demo tape. The characters don’t necessarily produce the album in the hopes that they will become rich and famous, but so that they can escape their real-life existence, even if only for a few hours. The dream is fueled by the possibility that it could become big through Skinny Black’s assistance, but the process itself is all about salvation.

What I really liked about Hustle & Flow is that all of the characters, especially DJay and one of his prostitutes, Nola (Taryn Manning), realize and wish that they could do more with their lives than hustling and prostituting. They are all unhappy with their chosen professions, yet do not see in themselves any abilities that might facilitate an elevation. DJay finds an outlet in his music, into which he can pour his frustration with his own wasted life. The other characters contribute in separate ways to the endeavor and all find their own personal strengths in the process. The resulting demo album is as much the supporting characters’ heart and soul as it is DJays, although the words are his own. He keeps a notepad with him at all times, writing down his life experiences in lyrical form and then expressing them through the music. We see his desperation with his every day life, as we follow him through the social sphere of prostitution and hustling, which itself is his inspiration. He has a talent with words and a philosophical outlook, and his desperation comes from knowing that he should be better than he is. Given different circumstances, he realizes that he could have been.

The acting is terrific, and I liked the direction that Craig Brewer took the film. It’s not a gangster movie, but a story to which many people can relate—characters unhappy with their lives trying to escape through the pursuit of a lifelong dream. In this case, the dream is music and the characters are hustlers, but the story is extraordinarily human. The actors did a wonderful job with their characters, and the music was especially good as the audience sees its creation, the meaning behind it perfectly clear. If you have any appreciation for music or have any kind of dream of your own, then you will definitely like this movie.