Rating- * * * * * (5/5)
This film is perhaps one of the most overlooked releases of the Academy voting season. There is always one film every year that gets lost in the mix of studio promotion, and it’s a shame that such a fate has befallen this wonderful film by Spike Lee. I approached this film with few expectations (always the best way to approach a film, if possible) since I had never seen “A Spike Lee Joint” before and there was little to no hype surrounding the film. I know next to nothing about Lee or his work except that it is traditionally racial in its subject matter and that it usually makes a lot of people uncomfortable (which is quite possibly why this film was ignored by the media). The film stars Edward Norton as Monty, a convicted drug dealer whom we follow around on his last day of freedom before he begins his seven year prison sentence. Monty seems to be a really nice guy at first; he’s a good friend, a loving boyfriend and he even rescues an injured dog on the side of the highway and takes him in. He just doesn’t seem like the type that would have gone into dealing drugs (but then, I guess very few people do seem the type). Over the course of the day Monty makes his peace with his girlfriend Naturelle (Rosario Dawson), his father (Brian Cox) and his two best friends Jacob and Frank. Jacob, played by one of our great character actors Phillip Seymour Hoffman, is an upper-class Jewish liberal who teaches at a public school out of a yearning to somehow compensate for the guilt he feels about his privileged upbringing. Frank, played by up and coming actor Barry Pepper, is a Wall Street hotshot who lives under the gun every minute of the day trying to deal with a post-9/11 economy and still keep his reputation as a reckless cowboy. He has a sort of cold, logical outlook on life, which probably comes from a need to suppress his sadness (he refuses to leave his apartment because of its great rates, even though it overlooks Ground Zero). This is a film that takes these incredibly deep characters and allows us to see them in action. Almost every scene in this film is memorable long after you’ve seen the movie. There’s the scene where Monty walks into a restaurant bathroom and sees “fuck you” written on the mirror, triggering a remarkable sequence where Monty applies the phrase to every group he can think of (Arabs, Catholics, Asians, etc.), hopelessly trying to fix his anger on someone or something other than himself. Then there’s the remarkable scene of revelation after Jacob does something he knows he should not have done when he realizes that he did said action without thinking whatsoever about what it would do to his life. This little scene seems unrelated to the rest of the film, but examined more closely it serves as a microcosm of Monty’s problem; he does what makes him happy, even if it means having to tolerate the sorrow it causes others. Perhaps Monty’s problem itself serves as a microcosm for the overall focus of the movie, the September 11th Attacks. I do not speak so highly of many emotional dramas, but this film is truly a gift to all film lovers. 25th Hour is one of the best films of the year and gets my highest marks of recommendation.