"25th Hour" – Time Well Spent by Homer Yen (c) 2003
There's a mood of devastation that quickly rolls into your mind with the opening credits. We see the empty lot where the World Trade Center buildings once stood. Now, there are only lingering memories, construction vehicles, and those powerful blue beams that present the ghostly image of the two towers in the New York night. There is also an operatic score that blares a little louder than the usual opening music. It evokes the sensation that civilization will soon come crashing down and that destinies will be forever changed.
This atmosphere provides the backdrop to the lives of three long-time friends. Each is about to alter their lives substantially. It propels them to face certain realities, redefine their friendships, and push them into areas that can only erupt in fits of rage.
The main character is Monty (Edward Norton), who is too nice and too clean-cut to be associating with the people that are his business associates. In one scene, he is rescuing a beaten up dog on the verge of dying. In the next scene, he is seen working with the Russian Mafia as a drug dealer.
Life is good for now. However, somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows that he is living off the misery of others. He also knows that he should get out soon before he is caught. And the city life, with its ever-swirling chaos, is starting to erode his sanity as well. Norton is a competent and well-spoken actor whom we can like and find easy to forgive him for his occupational choice. He has a singular standout scene in which he faces himself in a mirror and begins a diatribe about all the things that he hates about New York, including himself. This sequence will remind you of something similar in "Do the Right Thing."
The FBI does eventually catch up with him. And on the final night of his freedom, he asks to spend it with his two best friends. One is Jacob (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a frumpy high school English teacher who seems trapped, unprepared and subdued by his surroundings. His situation is made all the more frustrating by his attraction to a 17-year old student (Anna Paquin). The other is Frank (Barry Pepper), a Red Bull swigging and condescendingly swaggering Wall Street trader whose arrogance is no less appalling than the situations of Monty and Frank.
As such, "25th Hour" is more a presentation of these three people during Monty's last hours rather than a story with plot and arc. None of them have any goals to attain during the course of the film. They are just living out their lives the only way they know how. But the more they talk and interact, we are reminded that all of their successes comes at the expense of others.
If there is a moral to this story, perhaps it is this. Everyone has goals that are lofty. And to achieve them, selectively discarding a few values are acceptable. But, it is unclear just how much one will sacrifice and risk in the name of greed. This film doesn't provide answers as it does a context for discussion. As such, filmmaker Spike Lee has provided something that is both poetic and stirring.
Grade: B
S: 1 out of 3 L: 3 out of 3 V: 2 out of 3
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