That two sided car cannot be fuel efficient.
D-Jay is a pimp. A sleepy eyed, jeri curled, smack talking, ho-slapping, drug dealing ethical conundrum of a man. Or as he would go on to pronounce it 137 times in this film “may-en”.
But D-Jay has aspirations beyond illicit activities and domestic violence. He also pens lyrics about a myriad topics… OK mostly those pertaining to illicit activities and domestic violence. The ‘hook’ on his first song is “whoop that trick”. With “whoop” being “hit” and “trick” being “woman”.
Gather round family. It’s movie time.
Now far from removing myself to higher moral ground – I love hip-hop music and apparently hearing tales of whooping tricks is a necessary part of that – but while Hustle and Flow might be a decent character study at times, it is hardly worthy of praise beyond that, and certainly not a knee-jerk ‘let’s give the black people an Oscar lest we look like uninformed white people’ reaction. This film won Best Song, when there are hundreds of better hip-hop songs released each month. Even Kanye has made a better song than this one. Only one mind you.
Back to Hustle and Flow. D-Jay sees how Skinny Black (Ludacris – he has many better songs than the Oscar winner) has come up from the streets and gained fame. With Skinny Black coming to their very town in the near future, D-Jay coins a plan to meet Skinny and convince him that he is his hip-hop equal. The culmination of these events will obviously then be D-Jay’s rise to fame and fortune.
There is a scene where D-Jay and his ‘production team’ – a church choir soundman Key (Anthony Anderson), beat creator extraordinaire Shelby (DJ Qualls – who should be called Stringy White) and knocked up head ho Shug – build a track from the ground up, that raises the hairs on the back of your neck as the disparate elements evolve into something before your eyes and ears. That part works. But the rest works best in the moments where you think “oh don’t do that”. In summary: D-Jay will use ANYTHING at his disposal to extricate himself from his surroundings.
Hustle and Flow is a decent enough film but a ‘sometimes’ one. ‘Sometimes’ it is nice to see a film with flawed moral values where you are expected to root for the scumbag.
‘Sometimes’ it is ok to demand that the poor impressionable desperate lass that you provide a leaky roof for, perform sexual favours in return for recording equipment
‘Sometimes’ you might choose to give such a film an Academy Award, so that you don’t have to question the acts perpetrated by the antihero and admit that it’s all quite morally reprehensible.
It might be hard out there for a pimp, but that doesn’t mean you should feel sorry for them.
Final Rating – 6.5 / 10. Soapbox aside, Hustle and Flow is a competently made film with decent performances. That said I don’t think I will bother watching it again. I’d rather listen guilt free to the music rather than consider the type of characters that might be behind it.
