Release Date: December 19, 2002
Starring: Edward Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Pepper, Rosario Dawson, Anna Paquin, Brian Cox
Directed by: Spike Lee
Written by: David Benioff
Distributed by: Buena Vista Pictures
MPAA Rating: R (strong language, some violence)
Spike Lee’s best movies, of which 25th Hour is one and He Got Game was his most recent before it, all have something in common. They make the viewer grateful to be watching them from the cozy confines of some suburban multiplex, rather than up there on the screen with the characters, enduring the harsh realities and tough decisions that invariably comprise the plot of a Lee movie.
In this case, the harsh reality for Monty Brogan (Edward Norton), a mid-level drug dealer in New York City, is that, a day from when the movie begins, he’s going to jail for seven years -- he was busted for trafficking, and though it was his first offense, he refused to play ball with the feds. Monty must do a few things before he leaves Staten Island behind, though, including figuring out whether it was his girlfriend, Naturelle (Rosario Dawson), who ratted him out to the DEA. He must also say goodbye to his father (Brian Cox), as well as his lifelong friends, Francis (Barry Pepper) and Jacob (Philip Seymour Hoffman) -- the two of whom may even be his last hope for avoiding the hell of a seven-year sentence at Otisville.
In the Hollywoodized version of this story, Monty’s last day would be a spectacular, life-changing 24 hours, but anyone who’s been in Monty’s situation -- a day from going away for a long time -- will know that such last days are more about denial than personal discovery. Lee, working from a script by David Benioff based on Benioff’s novel of the same name, captures this futile idleness in Monty. Even on the morning of his last day of freedom, he takes the time to walk his dog, Doyle, through the parks and streets of Staten Island, his life and the movie ambling along at a strangely casual pace.
Surprisingly, Monty, a convicted drug dealer, has the most dignity of any of the characters in the film, standing tall and righteous among a pack of hypocrites. Monty’s drug money kept his father’s bar, a watering hole for a September 11-decimated company of firefighters, out of debt, and it paid for Naturelle’s trips to Puerto Rico. Even as those around him bemoan his fate, there is the sense that underneath it all, they’ll be sad to see the money dry up.
Meanwhile, Jacob, a lonely, self-hating high school English teacher, is equally sympathetic and critical of Monty, and but in a typical dosage of the movie’s overwhelming hypocrisy, he later finds himself seduced into a relationship with a 17-year-old student (Anna Paquin). Only Francis maintains that he never took any of Monty’s dirty money, but he is a wolfish stock broker and skirt-chaser, as fundamentally immoral as Monty.
The movie is capably acted throughout. Norton captures the sad look of a man who has accepted his fate but also the determination of one will not go down without a fight, a disposition typical of many New Yorkers; his relatively calmness, especially compared to his more fidgety costars, is eerie.
Pepper, the standout of the supporting cast, is just the opposite: he relentlessly chugs Red Bull energy drinks and pumps a stress reliever in his right hand as he peers out from eyes that are nervous and self-assured at the same time. He gives a memorably blunt performance, even down to the details, as when he sits in a Chinese restaurant across from Philip Seymour Hoffman and matter-of-factly extols his virtues as a member of the 99th percentile of New York City bachelors.
In many ways, these trivial but entertaining details are designed to distract the viewer from the movie’s larger theme, which is that in this country, power and wealth corrupt (something Lee explored in 1998’s He Got Game as well) as blindly as justice supposedly prevails. Even though Monty is a drug dealer, there is the feeling that he got a raw deal, but as he feels sorry for himself -- in one of the movie’s two most memorable and compelling scenes, he stands in the bathroom of his father’s bar, where someone has written “Fuck you!” on the mirror, and suddenly goes off on a tirade against all of the various ethnic, social, and religious stereotypes that New York City has to offer -- he realizes that, in the end, it was his own greed that got the best of him.
Lee also parallels Monty’s collapse to the post-September 11 city that he lives in, and the viewer can’t help but wonder if it was New York City’s insatiable greed for money and power that got the best of it, as well. After all, if New York hadn’t been such a powerful, wealthy city, boasting the two tallest buildings in America, would it still have been the terrorists’ primary target?
Probably not, but Lee’s focus is more personal. In one scene, Francis and Jacob stand in front of a window in a Manhattan high rise across the street from the decimated ruins of the World Trade Center site as they talk about Monty, the seemingly endless rebuilding effort transpiring between them in the background. It’s at first a confusing scene -- Lee’s movie doesn’t really need to focus so heavily on the World Trade Center disaster, though he should be given points for taking it head-on -- but it becomes clear later that the ugliness of life comes in all sizes.
It doesn’t always have to be this way, and Cox, playing Monty’s father, explains why in the movie’s other memorable segment: a grainy, but uplifting version of the American dream that leads Monty out West in search of a purity that New York City cannot offer. New York may be one of the most famously American cities this country has to offer, but it is certainly not indicative of the nation as a whole, which, in the end, may be why audiences from across the country will be able to enjoy 25th Hour.
all contents © 2003 Craig Roush