Review of Hustle & Flow (2005) by Kevin Val B — 21 Aug 2010

This film is about a pimp, his hoes and his aspirations for a career in hiphop. That sentence right there would've been enough to make me stay away from this movie. But thanks to my desire to watch Taraji P. Henson's earlier work, I sat through this one, and thank god I did.

It's a fine film, one with a real heart in it, despite its subject matter. What I liked about it is the depiction of a real, palpable, heartwarming bond between Terrence Howard's DJ and the prostitutes, especially Taryn Manning's Nola. It's like a twisted brother-sister relationship, and you could really feel how these supposedly depraved characters look out for each other. Howard, of course, deservingly merited an Oscar nom for his fine work as a pimp who dares to dream big, but I thought the MVP was really Manning, who handled a character that could've easily been a caricature with such sensitivity, affection and complexity.