"Waiting for the Flow"

Hustle & Flow
written and directed by Craig Brewer

        Dreams barely exist anymore, as they’re constantly overlooked in the search for any opportunities that will lead to success. Even the popular shortcutting fantasy of “get rich quick” has been replaced by the desperate “get famous NOW”, aided by a misconception that fame equates wealth. The American Dream is so rushed today that we’re left without heroes to admire; we only have celebrities to envy.
       Hustle & Flow may be the most honest and accurate portrayal of what has become of our country’s distinct ideal. A tale of chance, assumption and determination, Craig Brewer’s film deals with the naiveté that rouses and constricts such overeager aspirations, doing so with neither contempt nor approval.
      The film’s protagonist, a puppy-faced pimp named DJay (Terrence Howard), doesn’t have a dream so much as a wish to escape. But he’s not poor or strikingly unhappy, just aware of greener grasses. While dealing drugs to a local barkeep (Isaac Hayes), he learns that a famous rapper is coming home for one night and recognizes the possibility for an exit. It turns out DJay had dabbled in the music as a younger man and never pursued it. The common delusion of rap’s simplicity stresses its suitability, though the impending visitor could have just as easily been anything providing an outlet (if it was a drama critic nearing, perhaps DJay would have written a play).
       More things fall into place as DJay meets an old friend (Anthony Anderson) with a soundboard and a congenial vision. They turn his Memphis-ghetto home into a studio and completely, undividedly immerse themselves in their objective. With the convenience of money and indecent powers that come with the prostitution business (bartering girls for equipment; using hookers as backup singers), resources and troubleshooting come easy and before long a catchy song is produced.   
       At the height of the gang’s recording, the story becomes a hum-along crowd-pleaser and it’s no wonder that the film won the Audience Award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. But this is no rags-to-riches ascent or conquest of the underdog and despite Terrence Howard’s innocent, ignorant, dumb-is-sweet bewilderment approach to the character, DJay is uncompromising and the actor maintains a dynamic performance. He is an anti-hero not to be rooted for –his morals remain constant to the end –but to be exemplified as a model of the cash-and-connections reality.
         Still, Brewer never shows disdain for DJay. Instead he allows the character to be inhabited so deeply by Howard that the audience is at varying times excited for and disgusted with DJay’s actions so that whatever happens, the end is neither happy nor sad. It just is.
        Of course, just because the ending just is, doesn’t mean that it just works. Once DJay encounters his gateway hookup, the recording superstar Skinny Black (Ludacris), the film slows down, enters a cliché and then takes some unlikely turns. None of the flaws detract from the point but they do distract from an otherwise consistent path. It is as if Brewer is so fixed on being unpredictable that he becomes unnatural.
        Hustle & Flow succeeds mostly from the unstoppable performance by Howard. He pushes through even the silliest of scenes to make for a triumphant chronicle of pie in the sky. While Craig Brewer achieves much with his entertaining and pertinent film, he reeks of imperfection. Terrence Howard, on the other hand, displays a remarkable talent that may just be the stuff that dreams are made from. Or perhaps, enviable in his seeming effortlessness, he’ll just influence more to follow the American Escape.