Hustle & Flow

"You know it's hard out there for a pimp!", well no, I didn't know. I didn't because there's never been a movie that truly shows what it's all about, rap and hip-hop nor pimps and hoes. Memphis' own Craig Brewer writes nd directs Hustle & Flow, about a pimp suffering a mid-life crisis who decides to try and change his life around by becoming a rapper. Ok, the change wouldn't be that big because as we all know, rappers are pimps too.

DJay (played by Terrence Howard) is our rapper wannabe here, and he doesn't know if he can do it. All he knows is that he used to love his little Casio keyboard when he was a kid. He also knows that Skinny Black (Ludacris), who's also from Memphis, made it big some time ago, and so he dreams of making it too.

DJay's a pimp, and not your average pimp from movies where the guy is always loaded with money, bodyguards and hot whores. The women here are cheap sweaty hoes, thanks to Memphis' weather, and not very hot either. Taryn Manning is the total surprise as Nola, the petit white prostitute who's not very smart. Or is she?. What she is for sure is DJay's only girl who makes some money, thanks to his other two whores.
Paula Jai Parker plays Lexus, the dirty slut who doesn't care about DJay and wants to work at a strip club. She's highly hateful and nasty. And then Taraji Henson who plays Shug, the pregnant prostitute.
I totally loved Taraji in this role. A really likeable character and she plays it perfectly. It's kind of a waste though because we don't get to know much about her. And like I said before Taryn Manning is awesome. She's very cute even though she's all trashed down here, and she has a very sweet voice.

And then the guys. Anthony Anderson plays Key, a friend of DJay's who has a good life now. He's married and has a good house and all, but he works recording stuff like church gospel, weddings and even court cases, and he hates it. It's not what he wants to do with his life, so when DJay asks him to help him producing music he's in and gets into it more and more every day against his wife's wishes. Then DJ Qualls as Shelby, a skinny white boy who loves weed who works with Key on the recorder and mixer for the gospel music at church. Shelby's the one who brings all the beats to make the music and he knows what he's doing.
Great work by both of them in this movie. I've always loved DJ Qualls so it was no surprise for me but Anthony Anderson really was giving a very strong performance unlike any of that silly comedy he always does.

But the true star is Terrence Howard in the lead as DJay. The guy is a natural and his strong performance here, together with his Crash work early this year, is really breathtaking. He has great charisma and his dramatic work is excellent, putting a highly award worthy performance. I really hope he gets recognized by the Academy come awards season.

Craig Brewer is a white man, so everybody wants to know why the hell he decided to make a movie about rappers. He wanted to make a movie about the real Memphis he responds, and I'm glad he did it because this movie is excellent, giving 8 Mile a run for best hip-hop movie ever. Eminem's film is excellent too and cooler, but this one feels more real, because pimp, ho or whatever, everybody has a dream as DJay says, and it's stuff like that that make it so special, Hustle & Flow has heart.