The dirty South

Brewer has clearly grabbed the opportunity that comes with achieving great success on your first film and used his moment of freedom to go all out, taking every risk he can think of and having most of them, improbably, pay off. Despite its somewhat controversial pimp- and ho-positive stance, Hustle & Flow was really just your standard rise-to-stardom story, a feel-good movie about going after your dreams no matter how daunting the odds. Moan, too, has a sort of conventional narrative at its core, one about redemption from sin and spiritual rebirth (it does, after all, feature a protagonist named Lazarus), but Brewer approaches it in such a skewed way that it's almost a surprise when Ricci's white-trash nymphomaniac Rae actually starts to take some of what aging blues musician Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) says to heart.

It would be sweet, except for the fact that he's got her chained to the radiator in his house in some Tennessee backwater, and he may have confused her briefly for the wife who's just left him, and he's got as much a problem with drinking as Rae does with spreading her legs for any man who gives her so much as a glance. Except, it actually is sweet, since Lazarus is the first person to approach Rae with anything other than predatory desire, at least since her boyfriend Ronnie (Justin Timberlake) shipped off to war, and the two eventually develop a surrogate father-daughter bond of sorts. One that features a chain, of course.

A big part of why this comes off as anything other than completely absurd is that Jackson and Ricci dive headlong into their juicy characters, making you believe the demons inside of them as well as their burning desires for redemption. Although Ricci's now-bony physique is a disappointing capitulation to Hollywood beauty standards, it also works perfectly for the sinewy, almost reptilian Rae, whose every movement is a sexual come-on. Ricci's eyes practically bug out of her head, peeking out from under her ratty bangs, and her twangy accent gives Rae a deceptive sweetness; it's one of the best performances she's ever given.

Jackson is a little more his predictable self, but at least here that means predictably good and not predictably coasting. Lazarus is badass undergoing a spiritual crisis, like Pulp Fiction's Jules, but he's never anything other than kind and giving when it comes to Rae. After plumbing the depths of damaged sexuality, swamp-bottom blues and festering racial tension, Brewer turns out to be a softie at heart.