25th Hour
We watched Spike Lee's 25th Hour Saturday night. Interesting plot, but it failed to build any suspense. I was left watching how Ed Norton lived the last day of his free life, without questioning whether he would go in or not. Only in the final scene, when his father tempts him into fleeing, is that question raised. Before that, all we want to know but don't is who turned him in?

Anna Paquin's role was strange. Besides showing what a goof Phil S. Hoffman was, what? Wasn't one sexy woman enough? C'mon Spike, I expect better from you.

More disruptive to the movie were two things: the homage to 9/11, which seemed corny and forced, and the two or three periods of racial angst, which were even more forced, not to mention taken straight from his older work.

The film, while certainly wrought with race, ethnicity, class, gender issues, did not seem to be calling them into question specifically. The plot involved a hip white man -- with Irish roots, to be sure -- and his dilemma of going to the slammer. Sure, his girlfriend was Puerto Rican and said identity was questioned and excused for turning him in, but that was the extent of such dialogue; it hardly engaged in the larger narratives of exclusion and racism.

So to me, his five-minute rant picking on every sub-category in New York was totally out of place.