"How is it that the Mafia, America’s über-criminals, get such empathetic film treatment — think Tony Soprano’s therapy sessions and Ray Liotta’s ruminating voice-overs in GoodFellas — and black criminals get squat?"

I thought The Wire and Clockers were pretty good about this. Menace to Society and Boyz in the Hood also portrayed this well IMO. There are tons of terrible Mafia movies out there. Has there been a quality one since Goodfellas?

The biggest issue with black criminal films is that to make it truly effective, it has to be more about the socio-economic conditions which drives people into criminality and less about the actual criminal actions. That isn't going to interest many Hollywood suits.

Hustle and Flow was a solid movie that got blown up too much at Sundance. It happens all the time. This author seems to have bought into the hype and is acting like this film is the be-all, end-all of black cinema.