Hustle and Flow: Lively And Deadly

Hustle and Flow

Directed by Craig Brewer

Playing a small-time Memphis con man in Hustle and Flow, Terrence Howard steps into a contemporary stereotype of an African-American male: a vaguely criminal sexual athlete and natural musician. He's called Djay to drive home the point that today's most popular image of the black male is a rap star. Yet when the film begins, Djay is first seen as a pimp, sweet-talking a smooth line of street philosophy to us and to Nola (Taryn Manning), his white-girl hooker with long blond braids. Most reviewers respond to Djay's spiel and interracial impudence by clinging to their middle-class paranoia (Newsweek called him "dangerous"). They flinch at Djay's audacity while also being fascinated by it, as if any black man talking to a woman were Snoop Dogg.

But the way our corrupt media celebrates Hustle and Flow is by underestimating Howard's charming complexity. He makes this the most flamboyant and riveting opening scene any movie actor has had since George C. Scott in Patton. It's a wily provocation; viewers are forced to confront their superficial prejudices while Howard's green eyes, gentle voice and lyrical Southern twang seduce you past stereotype in order to behold his unpredictable humanity. This brazen and jivy speech (practically a Soul on Ice overture to the coming melodramatic character study) is also reminiscent of Wendell B. Harris' great, rarely shown Chameleon Street. There's that same uncanny concentration on a singular black striver; the camera is close up on Howard's face, detailing his light-brown complexionthe sweat in his pores becoming a sign of class- and caste struggle.

Hustle and Flow isn't really about a pimp. Its concern is with the emotional turmoil a man faces while dealing with women on top of the social difficulties that beset impoverished black men. The movie is being sold in terms of "Everyone Has a Dream," but that ad copy is a gross simplification. Writer-director Craig Brewer has seized the phenomenon of rap-music stardom (Djay's dream) to focus on the universality and pathos of a man's desire to determine his future. Djay has too much heart to succeed as a pimp. The three women in his houseNola, pregnant Shug (Taraji P. Henson) and bodacious stripper Lexus (Paula Jai Parker)suggest a sisterhood of babymamas. They're his made-up family, more unconventional than dysfunctional. An unspoken affection (not the dick spell that millennial minstrel 50 Cent raps about in "Magic Stick") is what holds them together.

Howard and Brewer show how that affection manifests itself when Djay gets the chance to make a demo tape. A high school friend, Key (Anthony Anderson), who records gospel choirs, helps Djay discover his sound and style (his "flow"). The church scene is critical: A black female soprano rings out a spiritual "I Told Jesus It Would Be All Right (If He Changed My Name)" that provides Djay with a palpable background of gospel indoctrination and matriarchal influence. Only rare tracks by R. Kelly and Blackstreet have admitted this powerful aspect of black culture; it's the flip side of hip-hop avarice and rapacity and it informs Hustle and Flow with an uncommon truth. This insight is extended with Key, a stocky family man with a pushy wife, Yevette (Elise Neal), who shares Djay's woman problems and macho frustrations.

Anderson's usually an affable comic performer, but here is his moment to delineate a black American male's quiet strain. Poignance is added to his likability. Howard and Anderson's credible fending-off tragedy makes Hustle and Flow specialdeeper than the clichd Rocky and 8 Mile. These American males have a narrow but desperate view of how they might achieve success. Brewer is right to deglamorize their hustle (Djay gets a reality check when he tries to pass his tape onto an established rapper played by Ludacris). This implicitly critiques hip-hop commercialismthe coarsening avaricethat has become the goal of post-Civil Rights, post-Reagan black America.

Still, Howard and Anderson's male-egoist characterizations are surprisingly empathic. Key has fidgety, subconscious bonds with Yevette. (Scenes from their marriage combine Ingmar Bergman with Tyler Perry.) Djay exploits the women in his life but only as much as he underestimates and cheapens himself. Hustle and Flow's best moments are about stressand releaseas felt by men and women in this symbolically degraded social sphere. The recording of Djay's demo involves them all (even Shelby, a white techie, played by DJ Qualls). p18

It's an egalitarian vision more than it is a showbiz commonplace. The working-class pathos that Clint Eastwood condescended to in Mystic River is made vivid in these scenes. Actresses Manning, Henson, Parker and Neal come through strong, distinct and passionate. Never what they originally seem, they show layers of feeling and wit. Frankly, no movie about black American life has had such a beautiful emotional range since Carl Franklin's Laurel Avenue (a promise Franklin never kept).

That Djay finally finds an outlet in rap music isn't so much a sinecure (or salvation) as it is a sign of his desperation and the limited options that our society has left open to men of his social background. He can either be a moral criminal or a rapper (a lesser variant of same). Hustle and Flow reveals that we rarely perceive a difference. But maybe the right perception can start here. Howard's breakthrough owes something to the film's producer, John Singleton, who has had trouble fulfilling the promise of his 1991 debut Boyz N the Hood. Singleton's 2001 feature Baby Boy foreshadowed Hustle and Flow's story of a black male moral crisis by analyzing the tragedy of hip-hop infantilism. It's reflected in the scene where Djay tries to rap, holding a crying baby in his arms and saying, "Cut that tears shit out!"a memorable image of tenderness and bravado. By complicating stereotypes, Howard easily achieves this year's finest male characterization.

Last Days

Directed by Gus Van Sant

If Djay wanted to be a rock star, critics would not feel morally superior, but probably idolize him in the way that has resulted in Gus Van Sant's Last Days, the alt-rock art movie that prizes grunge and suicide over hustling and flowing. Van Sant high-mindedly refuses to explore the day-to-day striving and hope behind contemporary pop phenomena. This fantasia on Kurt Cobain's death seems embarrassed of its protagonist's innermost feelings (or even his field of art). Van Sant skirts the humbling, redemptive part of one's humanity because it isn't cool. So, like a Rolling Stone or Artform pop shill, he attempts to turn Cobain into godhead by looking deep at the surface of his deathas if it were an enigma. Michael Pitt impersonates St. Cobain with the right lanky blond hair-do. He wanders the wooded estate followed by a puppyish Kubrick-cam. Hilariously, Van Sant bookends Last Days with a classical chorus singing an a capella requiem. It wakes you up from the tedium, but wasn't Heart-Shaped Box requiem enough? A.W.