director
Spike Lee
screenwriter
David Benioff
based on
his novel
producers
Julia Chasman
Jon Kilik
Spike Lee
Tobey Maguire
cinematographer
Rodrigo Prieto
music
Terence Blanchard
editor
Barry Alexander Brown
cast
Edward Norton (Monty Brogan)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Jakob Elinsky)
Barry Pepper (Frank Slaughtery)
Rosario Dawson (Naturelle Rivera)
Anna Paquin (Mary D'Annunzio)
Brian Cox (James Brogan)
Tony Siragusa (Kostya Novotny)
Levani Outchaneichvili (Uncle Nikolai)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 134m
u.s.
release: 12/19/02
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other spike
lee joints
reviewed on this website:
- bamboozled
- clockers
- 4 little girls
- get on the bus
- he got game
- inside man
- malcolm x
- summer of sam
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Whether you love or hate Spike
Lee's movies, they're not sellouts -- even a didactic, hectoring
bummer like Jungle Fever or Bamboozled
has integrity. In 25th Hour, perhaps Lee's most consistently
compelling work since 1995's Clockers,
protagonist Monty Brogan (Edward Norton) spends his last day
and night of freedom before reporting to prison for a seven-year
stretch. Monty got where he is (in both senses -- a fancy car
and a prison term) by dealing drugs. Yet we see no drug deals
in the movie. There are guns and thugs, but no shootouts. There
are flashbacks, but they serve only to flesh out Monty's life
-- what he's losing -- before this day and night. 25th Hour,
written by David Benioff from his novel, stays almost exclusively
with Monty as his moments of freedom tick away.
Part of what Monty is losing
is New York, the city he loves, and Spike Lee is not one to ignore
9/11's impact on the city. Two of Monty's friends -- Wall Street
hustler Frank (Barry Pepper) and schoolteacher Jacob (Philip
Seymour Hoffman) -- sit and talk, in a very long unbroken shot,
in front of Frank's window overlooking Ground Zero. "Bin
Laden can drop another bomb right next door; I ain't moving,"
says Frank, exemplifying the movie's (and its director's) philosophy
of pride and defiance in the face of disaster. Shooting for the
first time in widescreen, and aided by the deservedly hot cinematographer
Rodrigo Prieto (Amores Perros,
Frida, 8
Mile), Lee gives us sprawling and heartfelt panoramas
of the great city. Accompanied by his dog, Monty sits on a bench
staring out at the river; you know he's memorizing the view.
Frank, Jacob, and Monty's girlfriend
Naturelle (Rosario Dawson) take Monty out for one last night
on the town, and the mood is jocular yet muted, the atmosphere
heavy with the unspoken. Monty, who seems to be known and respected
everywhere, puts on a half-hearted show of indifference, but
inside he's terrified and furious at himself. Earlier, having
dinner with his father (Brian Cox) at the old man's bar, Monty
goes to the bathroom and is set off by an obscenity scrawled
on the mirror; he launches into a stream of invective (understandably
but wrongly attributed to Lee, it comes right out of Benioff's
book) that savages everyone in New York -- strangers, friends,
family -- and finally turns viciously onto Monty. In the highlight
of this tense, angry performance, Norton makes us see how love
can flip into hate: He rails against New York and everyone in
it because he no longer belongs there.
Monty's dog is about the only
one who loves him without complications. Frank tells Jacob that,
as much as he loves Monty, he deserves to be sent up. Jacob is
preoccupied with a Lolita-esque student (Anna Paquin) in his
English class; she tags along with Monty's group for a night
at the club, and her teasing of the flustered Jacob -- almost
forcing him to act on his heavily repressed lust -- is another
of those unwatchably painful Philip Seymour Hoffman moments.
In general, Lee doesn't jump around much; he keeps the camera
glued to Hoffman or Pepper or Dawson long enough to poke the
truth out of them. This director has always given his actors
room to breathe, create, surprise themselves.
In the gloomy dawn before his
seven years begin, Monty goes about giving up what little he
has left, even his looks. Monty's dad offers to drive him to
prison, then starts talking about possibilities. I won't give
it away, but it's the most heartbreaking alternate-universe riff
since the dead child really grew up to be an Olympic-class
swimmer in Stephen King's Pet Sematary. But the movie
insists on reality, and 25th Hour makes for a fine bookend
piece to Lee's Clockers, which also considered the drug-dealer
formula: You get caught or you get killed. Everything else is
details.
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