Hustle & Flow

Director: Craig Brewer

2005 / 116min / DCP

A procurer and drug dealer getting by on his wits in the streets of Memphis, Terrence Howard’s DJay has dreams of a different life, and towards that end steps into the studio with Anthony Andersen and DJ Qualls to remake himself as an emcee. An egalitarian vision of all-American self-reinvention, featuring some of the finest nuts-and-bolts songwriting scenes in all of cinema, breakthrough performances from Howard and Taraji P. Henson and, of course, the Academy Award-winning Best Original Song “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.” “[Howard gets] the most flamboyant and riveting opening scene any movie actor has had since George C. Scott in Patton. Brewer has seized the phenomenon of rap-music stardom to focus on the universality and pathos of a man’s desire to determine his future.” —Armond White, New York Press

“This is a perfectly made movie, honest in its depiction of a man’s intense insecurity and frailty, who disguised himself as a tough guy in an ugly profession—surviving and getting by. But the child in him mustered whatever courage he had to attempt escaping the perilous end he was campaigning for—and music was his conduit.” —Nathaniel Mary Quinn