Overview: "Hustle and Flow" is an unequivocally optimistic story about a pimp who dares to dream in an environment where a sense of helplessness is the norm. Terrence Howard plays Dejay, the struggling drug dealer and seller of his female escorts. Through his drive to get his demos heard, the audience meets a whole host of characters with the same passion to imagine different lives for themselves, but since these different lives are intangible, they cannot fathom them. They just continue to dream for more than what they were born into.
Good: Terrence Howard gave a magnetic performance as Dejay. Howard made the audience feel for Dejay, inspite of his drug dealing and pimpin' ways. Kudos on the Oscar nod. Well-deserved. Sidenote-Howard is studying to get his Master's in Chemical Engineering. Wow, the brother is cute and DEEP.
The characters were all well-defined and we were able to see more than the stereotypical ghetto. I felt like I could get under their skin and almost understand their reality, it was a situation between entrapment in a cycle and trying to break it.
Bad: The movie was pretty self-conscious, like it wanted to be that rising from the streets (8-Mile) type of flick. Even though the characters were well-defined, I would have appreciated more of a struggle because realistically, this one-in-a-million opportunity is just that, one in a million. Making-it-big is not as easy as the movie made it seem, and I am sure a lot of that had to do with the pacing of the film and the limited time in which certain motifs were allowed to develop. The creation of the first demo tape took what seemed liked 5 mins. and its success on the radio had the same time allotment.
Recommendation: I say, watch it. It was pretty good. If you are looking for social commentary on pimps and hoes, look again. This movie is about having faith in a dream you know is bigger than yourself and all the insecurities that entails. I can appreciate it for telling me that.
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