Like its predecessor, the Sundance hype-magnet “Hustle & Flow,” Craig Brewer’s new film, “Black Snake Moan,” comes cloaked in lurid, pulpy atmospherics. His characters — pimps, prostitutes, nymphomaniacs — seem to have crawled off the drugstore paperback racks of the 1950s or the grind house lobby posters of a slightly later era. His stories are slick with the grease of old-style exploitation, promising the sleazy, easy pleasures of lust, wrath and other deadly sins.
Don’t be fooled though. Underneath the surface of racial and sexual button pushing, behind the brandished guns and bared breasts, is a heart of pure, buttery cornpone. Like “Hustle & Flow,” “Black Snake Moan” joins a dubious stereotype of black manhood to an uplifting, sentimental fable. In the earlier movie the hero was a soulful pimp with dreams of hip-hop glory.