25TH HOUR (director: Spike Lee; screenwriter: David Benioff/based on Mr. Benioff's book; cinematographer: Rodrigo Prieto; editor: Barry Alexander Brown; music: Terence Blanchard; cast: Edward Norton (Monty Brogan), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Jakob Elinsky), Barry Pepper (Francis Xavier Slaughtery), Brian Cox (James Brogan), Rosario Dawson (Naturelle Riviera), Anna Paquin (Mary D'Annunzio), Tony Siragusa (Kostya Novotny), Isiah Whitlock Jr. (Agent Flood), Tony Devon (DEA Agent Allen), Levani Outchaneichvili (Nikolai), Al Palagonia (Sal); Runtime: 134; MPAA Rating: R; producers: Tobey Maguire/Julia Chasman/Jon Kilik/Spike Lee; Touchstone; 2002)
"The film does a good job in capturing the grim mood of NYC after 9/11."
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Spike Lee's "25th Hour" is based on the book by David Benioff, who acts also as the screenwriter, and is about the twentysomething brash and talkative Irish New Yorker Monty Brogan (Edward Norton) and his last day of freedom before he turns himself in to the overcrowded and dangerous upstate New York prison for a seven-year term for heroin possession. He had on him one kilo with intent to distribute, which results in the stiff mandatory penalty due to New York's Rockefeller drug laws. I suppose he is out on bail because his widowed retired firefighter Staten Island bar owner father (Brian Cox) put up the bar that is a shrine to the fallen firemen as bail money, but the film never clears that up. In the time left before he loses his freedom, he revisits his elite private high school he attended on a basketball scholarship and wonders what went wrong from his promising early start after he lost his basketball scholarship for selling weed. He also spends time with his two closest and oldest friends - the frustrated lonely heart Jakob (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a high school teacher in the same private school they both attended, and the handsome and arrogantly confidant Frank (Barry Pepper), a rising reptilean-like cowboy Wall Street broker. He also comes to terms with his Puerto Rican longtime girlfriend, Naturelle (Rosario Dawson), as he is suspicious that maybe she ratted him out.
The film opens as Monty takes time out from making a drug deal to rescue a dog abandoned somewhere under the FDR Drive who was tortured and left to die in pain. That wounded dog is named Doyle and becomes not only his refurbished pet but another ready-made film metaphor.
In the background the film plays as an elegy to a city reeling in the aftermath of 9/11, a hard hit city that has the grit to pick itself up off the mat and fight back. The city looks dreary and is filmed in digital video as its colors are either darkened further in gloom and doom or given that pop culture blue metallic look. Monty's plight is compared to the city's (it sugarcoats that he's a greedy pig without a conscience who sells heroin in park playgrounds where children play). The film is atmospheric of the post 9/11 days and in one scene it is spooky seeing the stock broker talking to his teacher friend in his ritzy apartment overlooking ground zero. The real heroes of the city are the firefighters and they are remembered along with the Yankees and the Wall Streeters, and the resilient Manhattanites who put up with breathing the bad air from the WTC wreckage but refuse to move out of their proud city.
Monty reveals his vulnerable side and how he took the wrong road and chased a bad dream. He reveals himself as a first-time offender who never thought he would get caught but would only get wealthy, a skinny white boy who is a punk and not tough when away from his protectors and who fears that he is too handsome to survive prison among the hardened criminals but will not rat out his boss, the Russian drug lord Nikolai (Outchaneichvili), for a reduced sentence because he is both loyal and fearful of the consequences to his father if he does. Monty is afraid to go to prison and of being gang raped, and of having no one there to protect him. He believes he only has three choices, as his life has become futile: To do the time and use his wits to get by. To escape to some desert town out west and change his identity and live a life of obscurity. Or, lastly, to commit suicide. The film tantalizes us with these three choices and never makes clear which one he chooses, as it traces Monty's dealings with the girlfriend he loves, the father who loves him and would do anything for him now because he feels he once let him down, his old friends who are loyal, and his new gangster friends he doesn't trust and has made up his mind he's through with them when this nightmare is over.
In Monty's occupation, you better know who to trust or the results could be disastrous. DEA agents discover his drug stash hidden in his Castro sofa on a tip. The only two people who knew he kept it there are his girlfriend and his giant Ukranian strong-arm, Kostya (former NFL star from the Baltimore Ravens Tony Siragusa), whom Nikolai sent him as protection for the drug deals.
The most involving scene is the last night party Nikolai throws for him in a trendy late night downtown club, as he is forced to attend. He brings Naturelle, Frank, and the nerdy Jakob shows up in a Yankee cap where he meets outside the pretty but shallow 17-year-old student of his, Mary D'Annunzio (Anna Paquin), whom he fantasizes over but never had enough nerve to act on this crush. Monty gets her into the club, and the insecure and tongue-tied teacher is confused about what to do about his lust when she obnoxiously leads him on so that he will change her grade.
The film does a good job in capturing the grim mood of NYC after 9/11. All the performances are uniformly good without being special, but good enough so that one can forget how thin the plot is and how less than fulfilling the character study is. As hard as it tries to show that Monty is not such a bad guy but only one of many such urban wiseguys who was misled by a dream of living the fast lifestyle, he still remains unsympathetic even when we can feel his concerns about his personal safety and that he has a soft spot in his heart for dogs and chicks. But, we also realize he has no excuse for ruining other people's lives in such a wanton and self-indulgent fashion, and that he's merely a lightweight hiding behind a phony tough exterior. His mother's death at age 11 and his father becoming an alcoholic are not much of an excuse for a life of crime. Spike Lee never comes up with a moral to the story or a firm grasp about his protagonist's character, but the film remains strong because the script is tight. But the life of Monty can be quickly forgotten as soon as the party is over or in this case when the fancy visual filmmaking techniques from cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto end with the final violent scene. Monty turns out to be just another guy who cries foul because he got caught and if he didn't get caught there would in all probability be no dilemma in his life. The film is emotionally stirring and reaches for one's gut rather than the heart, but to connect Monty as a tragic figure with the innocent victims of 9/11 is a big mistake. That specious connection is what keeps me from warming up to this disturbing film, as Lee can never get around to saying something about Monty's failure that could be layed solely on his own doorstep. The working-class origins of Monty and his fall to crime are never adequately explained so that we can understand him better. He therefore never becomes someone whom the viewer can say made a mistake and can be forgiven because he has gained enlightenment, instead he always seems to be working for only his own selfish gain. His anger seems to be a New York type of brusque attitude toward the world that is charming in a perverse way. In the bathroom when he looks at himself in the mirror and goes on a rant about hating all New Yorkers and includes Osama bin Laden in his invective, it all seems misplaced and merely a provocative conceit in filmmaking as even this confessional rage does not bring him closer to us.
REVIEWED ON 1/15/2003 GRADE: B
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
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