If I Could Flow, I Would Hustle

The event that got me blogging again after a few months’ hiatus was The Academy Awards and the fact that the Three-Six Mafia won for best song.

After watching Hustle and Flow, I now see why they won.

This is a good movie, probably better than Crash, the film about race that won Best Picture for 2005. It’s better because it’s subtler. It details all of the same issues—race, poverty, crime—but it does so in a way that is simply about real life, especially one person’s struggle to overcome the situation he’s in.

The way Terence Howard portrays D-Jay is difficult: difficult to understand his speech, difficult to follow his actions, and difficult to comprehend his motivations. But that’s just it, isn’t it? People are complicated and individual. What I like about Hustle and Flow is that it doesn’t try to become a stand-in for all black people or all people in the ghetto, like Crash tried to do. The characters in Crash are allegories or “everymen.” They represent the people of their race or of their situations. When I watch Crash, I am meant to see myself in the characters, more than likely in the Brendan Fraser character, or possibly in the young cop character—you know, the white people who don’t think they’re racist, but they really are. This is all white people, the movie says: “even though you think you’re enlightened, you’re really just covering up your prejudices.”

It’s a good statement, and more true than most of us would care to admit. It’s also a bit heavy-handed. Issues don’t make for good movies, in general, and Crash is an issue film, a movie with an agenda.

Hustle and Flow may have an agenda, too, but it’s just to show the circumstances surrounding one man’s life and his dream to escape it. The fact that his escape is through music makes it even better. My only complaint is that the movie didn’t spend more time on how they created the music. I could watch Sugar sing those lines over and over… “You know it’s hard out here for a pimp…”

Grade for Hustle and Flow: 7