Since his perfectly tempered, career-changing performance as DJay in 2005’s Hustle & Flow, Terrence Howard has made a whole bunch of movies and done a fair amount of TV, and nothing has really worked all that well. Certainly not theatrically. Either the films he chose to make weren’t all that good or Howard wasn’t that good in them, or both. He seems to be pretty much going for the dough. I’m not saying he’s Cuba Gooding but he’d better watch it.

Fighting is the most recent. Before that was Iron Man, The Perfect Holiday, Awake, August Rush (bad), The Brave One, The Hunting Party (bad), Pride, Idlewild, Get Rich or Die Tryin’, Four Brothers. His best run so far was ’04 and ’05 when he made Crash, Ray, The Salon and Hustle & Flow. Quality- and luck-wise it’s been downhill ever since. You have to be in a really good film or land a really good part every four or five years. You can’t just cruise along and pocket the cash.