“Friday” (1995)
F. Gary Gray’s 1995 comedy appears alongside “Boyz In The Hood” on this list for a specific reason: both films feel smuggled through the ‘90s studio system but via entirely different circumstances. Whereas “Boyz In The Hood” found a key supporter early on in producer Stephanie Allain, who pitched it personally to Columbia execs, “Friday” began as a $75,000 B&W comedy from a 24-year-old Gray that gradually built, after many half-starts, into one of New Line Cinema’s most lucrative franchises. The two films are comparable by how Gray’s film was influenced by Singleton’s —the success of ‘Boyz,’ alongside the LA Riots, meant that South Central held a specific point of reference in the public consciousness, one of nonstop violence and degradation. Ice Cube, who co-wrote the film with DJ Pooh and starred, set out to change that. “Everybody was looking at our neighborhood like it was hell on Earth, like the worst place you can grow up in America,” Cube recounts in Complex’s in-depth oral history of the film. “And I’m like, ‘why?’ I didn’t see it all that way. I mean, I knew it was crazy around where I grew up, but we had fun in the hood. We used to trip off the neighborhood.” Seen mostly from the view of a front stoop, the film is notable for letting the environment seep into the narrative. The vibe is laid-back to an extreme, more a steady chuckle than laugh-out-loud funny, with Chris Tucker’s eternally stoned character Smokey mainly responsible for the film’s peaks in energy, as well as its most quotable lines (you’ve heard, “You got knocked the fuck out” at some point, guaranteed, although Cube’s “Bye, Felicia” may even be supplanting that as a modern meme). Gray’s film was a deserved launching pad for Tucker, as well as a dizzying list of actors —Meagan Good, Nia Long, Faizon Love, Tommy Lister— and as the director tackles the epic breadth of N.W.A. with “Straight Outta Compton,” it’s worth revisiting to see just how much, in collaboration with Cube all those years ago, he could achieve just outside the front door.
“Get Rich Or Die Tryin'” (2005)
After the enormous success of Universal‘s “8 Mile,” Paramount tried to cash in by signing up Eminem’s protege Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson, a man with a bad-boy past that far surpassed that of Marshall Mathers, to star in his own autobiographical big-screen memoir. As with Curtis Hanson‘s film, big-name, prestige-y talent was involved: “The Sopranos” writer Terence Winter (who’s since showrun “Boardwalk Empire” and the upcoming “Vinyl” for Martin Scorsese and HBO) penned the script, and “My Left Foot“‘s Jim Sheridan, hot off the multi-Oscar nominee “In America,” was hired to direct. Unfortunately, the results were less than satisfactory for pretty much everybody. Jackson stars as Marcus, a young man who, after the death of his beloved mother and while being looked after by his grandmother (played by Viola Davis, at 39 just 10 years older than her on-screen grandson) becomes a drug dealer and is targeted by his boss’ ambitious right-hand man (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). Sheridan and Winter do their best (there’s occasionally a pleasing level of texture in the film’s margins), surrounding Jackson with some strong actors, including Davis, Joy Bryant and Terrence Howard, but the material leans so heavily on the star’s I-got-shot-a-bunch-of-times-and-now-I’m-rich mythos that it feels at once self-aggrandizing and fairly boring. Indeed, the film’s biggest problem is Jackson himself: whereas Eminem proved to be a charismatic performer, Jackson’s almost entirely mumbly, one-note and inexpressive. A decade on, he’s still acting, up to and including last month’s “Southpaw,” but a smarter star would have taken the tepid response to this and decided to focus on music. Still, if nothing else, it’s an amusing title for his biopic in light of his recent bankruptcy.
“Ghost Dog: Way of The Samurai” (1999)
Drawing the viewer in with a certain premise and promptly jettisoning it for the path less travelled, Jim Jarmusch’s eighth film explores the less bombastic flipside to the Wu Tang Clan’s influences. Jarmusch knows the territory: he was amongst the first filmmakers to approach RZA for a soundtrack, as well as a cameo, in his story featuring Forest Whitaker as a solitary hitman living on a metropolitan rooftop and dodging a host of gangsters (including his mentor) out to kill him. But it’s the Eastern philosophy (precluding the action sequences of RZA’s own effort “Man With the Iron Fists”) that’s the focus here, morphing “Ghost Dog” into an understated mash-up of genres: an existentialist, multi-cultural, samurai noir that shifts fundamentally from scene to scene. Every action that Whitaker’s character takes is deliberate, with Jarmusch paying close attention to the various codes, samurai and otherwise, running the city and its citizens, but replaying that through an urban, hip hop-influenced matrix. The themes of author Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s short story “Rashōmon” play into the narrative heavily as well, with Akutagawa’s book actually showing up, passed down from Whitaker’s character to Pearline (Camille Winbush), an impressionable young girl he befriends. But the film is not the dour, po-faced affair all this would suggest: an assassination via sink drain is an arthouse “Home Alone” gag; a stare-down between Whitaker and a dog over ice cream is similarly amusing. But be ready for the same sort of genre-soaked meditation that Jarmusch has only improved upon with “The Limits of Control” and “Only Lovers Left Alive,” albeit one with an absolutely stellar soundtrack album that includes a couple of Wu Tang and RZA cuts not heard in the film.
“Hustle and Flow” (2005)
The first scene of Craig Brewer’s “Hustle & Flow” is really something else. Terrence Howard sits in the front seat of a two-tone Chevy Caprice. His hair sits atop his head in luxuriant curls, and a thin film of sweat coats his face. He talks to a young, scowling, natty-haired white woman who sits in his passenger’s seat. “Man ain’t like a dawg”, he drawls, although his words occasionally resemble some soupy, lurching verbal gumbo of his own creation more than what’s traditionally known as the English language. The soliloquy he gives to this young woman is alternately wise, disgusting, horrifying and true. It sets a high mark that the rest of the movie does not necessarily meet, but this brief, nasty three or four minutes of cinema never wholly leaves your mind. “Hustle & Flow” is a sordid if ultimately redemptive underdog story about a bottom-feeding pimp named DJay (Howard) who learns to channel his frustrations and dreams into rap music. The arc is familiar, but the execution is undeniably lively. Recording sequences are a highlight, as they capture the feeling of making combustive magic happen in the studio. The creation of DJay’s “Whoop That Trick” in particular is thrilling, even if the song itself, along with the Oscar-winning “It’s Hard Out There For a Pimp” is fairly repugnant. “Hustle & Flow” comes undone near the end when its sense of fever-dream melodrama —a longtime narrative weakness of director Brewer— threatens to overshadow some of the fine characterization and nuance that has come before, but still, it’s worth seeing for the soundtrack, the brilliant evocation of modern-day Southern rot and the menacing, baby-voiced turn from leading man Howard, who has never been better. DJay may be a dog, but like the film, he’s got some fight in him yet.
