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'Hustle & Flow'

The raps come off on a shining new star

BY GENE SEYMOUR | STAFF WRITER

July 22, 2005

As DJay, a Memphis street hustler who's hit the proverbial wall, Terrence Howard speaks with an impeccably formed regional drawl and carries himself throughout "Hustle & Flow" with a leonine wariness. Whether making a sales pitch for his stable of prostitutes or advancing his nascent career as a rap artist, Howard's DJay can slide his voice from downy soft to razor sharp with no intervals showing. He delivers one of those screen performances where even the lighting of a cigarette carries the portent of a moon launch.

Howard's been knocking on stardom's door for some time now, and "Hustle & Flow" should seal the deal. Though the premise of writer-director Craig Brewer's film seems unlikely (and even somewhat unsavory), it's not surprising that it won this year's Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival - especially when one considers how many people flock to Park City, Utah, every January pursuing the kind of artistic transfiguration sought by Howard's ruminative pimp-poet.

Besides, if the recent spate of documentaries such as "Mad Hot Ballroom" and "Murderball" is any indication, discriminating moviegoers seem hungry for uplifting stories in unlikely places - even if they're as unlikely as the sullen fringe streets of Memphis, Tenn., where DJay wonders if hustling women is all there is to his life.

This midlife crisis begins resolving itself when DJay merges his aspirations with those of Key (Anthony Anderson), a onetime classmate who's now married, harried and flirting with dreams of using his engineering skills to make hit records. The transformations begin with DJay's living room turned into a makeshift recording studio with egg cartons stapled to the walls for soundproofing. A callow white kid named Shelby (DJ Qualls) is recruited to lay down heavy-duty rhythm tracks beneath DJay's "crunk"-style rapping. Once a "demo" is laid down, DJay's next step is to get it into the hands of local-rapper-made-good Skinny Black (Chris "Ludacris" Bridges).

Brewer's film is good at evoking the gritty languor of DJay's home turf. There's also a muggy tension that emits sparks, especially at the climax. The crescendo of DJay's reinvention is offset by harrowing scenes involving the women in his life, especially Shug (Taraji P. Henson), a pregnant drug addict, and Nola (Taryn Manning), a hooker whose devotion to DJay is strained to the edge of rupture.

Indeed, it's the movie's handling of its women characters that prompts some mild queasiness about its premise. ("You know, it's hard out here for a pimp," one of DJay's riffs intones. Yeah ... well, there are a lot of other hard roads for African-Americans to walk toward self-realization that don't involve someone else's exploitation.) But if "Hustle & Flow" does nothing else but get Howard into the major leagues, he's the kind of presence capable of raising everyone's aspirations - possibly even those of Hollywood producers.