'Hustle and Flow' get's 'Living the Dream' right.

Rating: 8/10 (31 March 2018)

This is simply one of the best movies about living the dream and the struggle to be somebody and self-actualize that I've seen. But first, i digress. As a guy in his late 30s i take issue with the IMDB logline implying that a guy who's 40 (As Terrence Howard is in H&F) is mid-life. I'm not saying it's wrong. I just take issue with it.
Terrence Howard is great as DJay, a pimp with a few other side hustle (Taraji Henson, Paula Jai Parker, and Taryn Manning, are all terrific in their roles).
They're all living with him, and one is his baby's mama, and exerts a lot of pressure in trying to get him to be the man that she wants him to be (a recurring theme in the movie, and with that I'll mention that Anthony Anderson was also great in his supporting turn).
This all changes when a chance encounter from a most unexpected source brings music back into his life and rekindles an old dream, setting him off on a journey to reach success by both moral and immoral means.
From then on, the movie is very well written and acted, and features good acting from all the aforementioned and more. I'm not in the music biz, so I'll avoid commenting on the music business stuff, but it felt very genuine to me, especially in terms of the artistic process.
But Hustle and Flow is really a movie about what it really means to be successful, especially as an artist, and to really live the dream. And I think the message of the movie is that it isn't about money and glitz, but about self fulfillment and a sense of accomplishment, even in the absence of the material gain. And that too, was very well executed in the film, written and directed by Craig Brewer. Great film.