The last day of freedom for Monty Brogan (Edward Norton) before a seven-year drug dealing term
starts on the promenade overlooking the East River as Monty ponders his life.
Born into an Irish family with an alcholic father (Brian Cox) and an angelic mother, Brogan though short
won a prep school scholarship for basketball. On his sad walkabout Brogan revisits the school with his
dog Doyle.
Doyle is no ordinary dog. Brogan on the way to a drug deal found the battered Doyle by the side of the road and
brought the battered animal to a Vet.
At the school Brogan learns his youthful laurels have been surpassed by later students and his
records broken. Regretfully though a star player, Brogan had been cut from the team before
graduation. Brogan had discovered it more profitable to sell drugs to rich kids at
the school rather than play basketball.
There is a certain charm to Monty Brogan despite his chosen career in drugs. Yet it is difficult
to feel even a little sympathy for a man who has exchanged dreams
of courtside seats at Madison Square Garden for the dock in a different forum or even
to despise whoever might have turned the wretch in.
In the hours before execution of sentence, Brogan must question who betrayed him: his girlfriend Naturalle is as likely prospect as his business
associate Kostya.
In a disturbing looks at himself in the mirror,
Brogan is quite frank in his hates: The Catholic Church, The clannish Italians, The Irish firemen, the patrons
of his father's bar all killed at the World Trade Center, The Diamond Merchants, Blacks who in
his opinion can't really play basketball and immigrants of all types. Did Brogan leave
anyone out?
Edward Norton plays Brogan the centerpiece of the drama with consumate persuasion. Yet at
6'1" he is hardly the scrawny Irish kid who leaped onto the basketball court with a fury.
Nor is Norton, the son of a polished Baltimore barrister, from a dysfunctional home in the nether world of the borderline between
poverty and respectability.
Yet Norton carries Brogan so well that the Brogan character melds
into the film's remarkable, excellent, realistic local color from New York. As Brogan
rants how much he hates his father, the viewer flows in
a flashback right into Brogan's father's tavern with off-duty city firemen cheering
the NY Yankees on and is flashed ahead to the wreaths laid in their memory
against a wall. Brogan's drug money kept the bar afloat. How Brogan wishes he had invested
the loot with a high school friend who became a succesful trader on Wall Street.
Although the screen play is ambitious and daring
in trying to make a sympathetic character out of slick drug dealer in final days before
imprisonment, the well-drawn characters plod through wholly believable situations in
Spike Lee's terrifying, raw look at society and penetrating study of Irish Americans.
On his last fling, Brogan takes his high school chums for a visit to one of those Manhattan clubs where the drug world, the haute monde
and the mob intersect, certainly the type of den of inequity which could produce the traitor.
Surrendering faithful Doyle to one of his friends, Brogan demands a beating from the other so that
he'll look tough enough for prison.
His father arrives to drive Brogan to Otisville, but privately offers to sendhim into hiding. Brogan vividly imagines the type
of life he could lead on the lam or does Brogan imagine going to jail?
Lee captures in a fleeting seconds at the end what few outsiders understand about the duality
of the minds of the Kelts and the power of the dream world and the imagination.
25th Hour (2002) 
A Dog's Life: 25th hour