SummaryThe story of the last twenty-four hours Monty Brogan (Norton) gets to spend with his two best friends and his girlfriend before he goes to prison for seven years for pushing heroin.
SummaryThe story of the last twenty-four hours Monty Brogan (Norton) gets to spend with his two best friends and his girlfriend before he goes to prison for seven years for pushing heroin.
The film persuades us to think long and hard about what prison means, and Lee has shaped it like a poem that builds into an epic lament, especially in a beautiful and tragic closing that risks absurdity to achieve the sublime.
25th Hour is a movie based on a book that you can tell used to be a book. It's a faithful adaptation by way of taking the time to extrapolate and portray (and sometimes betray) these characters on screen, the way they snap at each other like only old friends and lovers can, the way they talk behind each others backs, but then have said back when the need arises. The source material's strengths (and script by a pre-Game of Thrones Benioff) are that the ramifications of the 25th hour are felt by all involved, and these characters are all of them culpable in their own ways, and corrupted, loveable, realistic, twisted and full of shades of grey. The dialogue is biting and lyrical, poignant and captures that real darkness. They accuse each other with the blinkers of themselves on.
Edwards Norton sings, an understated but typically tremendous performance, in fact, every cast member is at the top of their game, Barry Pepper, such an underrated actor is a perfect **** Rosario Dawson plays young and old so well in this movie it's like two different people and the incomparable Philip Seymour Hoffman is sad and hilarious. By the morning they all look, walk and talk like haggard older men, out all night, they let themselves be ugly.
Spike Lee has taken someone else's story and taken the state of his soul following 9/11 and he fused them into one story. Lee transposes his heartbreak, angst, pain and anger into this story, it's every bit his work as it is Benioff's book; not only was it cautionary and timely tale at the time, but its messages still resonate today. Spike Lee, a man who could describe New York City as "his city" made a film that reflected its **** soul. When the camera frames Ground Zero out of focus for a conversation and then racks it into focus and Terence Blanchard's score swells, it's indelibly haunting and moving.
That scene, yes that scene. The Mirror scene. It's a bravura piece of filmmaking, writing and of acting; The jarring poetry of it stirs a dual idea of blame culture (more relevant now even than it was after 9/11) and then when this scene is reflected at the end, the very human idea that it's the things you think you hate about something, is more often than not, were the reasons you maybe actually loved about it.
During that scene and all over 25th Hour is the most soulful soundtrack I've ever heard; it's accusatory and soothing, it's almost constant throughout the film which is novel, and it seems to bleed a kind of unified pain; it has a sense of collective mourning, and the voices of the dead. It speaks for those that aren't there. It says the things that no one in the film does.
And that ending. I won't say anything about it suffice to say that it's also such a bold commitment, doubling down on the real pain of that 25th hour; just as powerful as the slow-start and slow reveal of what this film is even about. Even though I've never been in Monty's situation, there's that feeling; missing time, missed opportunities, passing over to new life, changes you made but never knew would happen, something like that, that pervades this entire film and makes it completely relatable in some esoteric and deeply human way.
25th Hour is my favourite Spike Lee movie. It has all of his hallmarks, his passions and his knowledge, but it's different, it's the New Yorker in him that made this film, not his race, it's a film that's more relevant than ever. It comes from deep within; when a person in this film embraces and the editing tries to snatch the same moment twice or three times, almost overlapping, you can palpably feel the characters try and snatch that moment back as if in protest to the shortness in time and amount of these moments left in their lives, or like the mind trying to remember the moments in the past that really mattered, when two people came together.
Some critics say the film runs too long, but I would have it no other way. Rodriguez Puerto makes this film visually stunning with shots and colors not seen in other films. The plot, performances, dialogue, pacing, and story-line are all in perfect order. A must see film for those who love movies.
25th Hour proves that big ideas and an indie sensibility can still flourish inside the studio system. One of the more entertaining and thought-provoking Spike Lee Joints in a long while.
With all of its oversights and indulgences, 25th Hour is still a persuasive, undeniably fascinating film—watching Lee throw everything on his mind into the fray, no matter how irreconcilable with the story, makes for an interesting experience.
Spike Lee's films have been provocative, blunt, thoughtful, misguided, daring, sentimental, funny, honest and silly. But 25th Hour earns the director two new adjectives: irrelevant and tedious.
A little king of New York turned outcast princeling, Edward Norton wanders through a purgatory of his own design in the Spike Lee-directed 25th Hour, enjoying (if the word applies) one last day of freedom before serving a seven-year sentence on felony drug charges. The story, which David Benioff adapted from his own novel, unfolds mostly over the course of that one day, but it's enough to reveal a lifetime. The gifted son of an Irish firefighter-turned-bartender (Brian Cox), Norton entered his ill-fated life of crime one easy step at a time. Neither the quiet disapproval of his lifelong friends (Barry Pepper, as a high-stakes stockbroker, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, as a lonely high-school English teacher) nor the love **** woman (Rosario Dawson) could steer him away from it. From a tasteful Manhattan apartment, beneath an unknowingly ironic Cool Hand Luke poster, he became an inconspicuous criminal, the drug lord as Harper's subscriber. Now his reign has ended, and the business of living has become considerably less pleasant. Telling what's essentially a story of introspection, Lee lets Norton **** his reflections over a whole city. Norton and his friends go about their day against the backdrop of a New York still unsteady from the recent attacks of Sept. 11, a phase in the city's history captured in The 25th Hour with almost journalistic detail. Where a less disciplined filmmaker might have used this merely to echo his characters' frames of mind, Lee sets up a complicated relationship between the city and its inhabitants, particularly Norton, who at one point explodes in a hateful monologue that barely hides the love beneath it. But love it or hate it, he knows he has to leave it, and that knowledge gives every moment a clear sense of urgency. It doesn't hurt that all of the performances are, at the least, remarkable. Norton creates a character who seems fully capable of the offenses he commits, and just as capable of the crippling regret he struggles to keep at bay. After all, one small change anywhere along the line, and things could have turned out differently. The film at its simplest serves as a cautionary tale, but it also functions as a meditation on how little it takes to redirect a life by choice or by chance: A woman could fall for a shameless volley of flirting, or a sideline business dealing pot could turn into a career dealing heroin, or a plane could fall from the sky, or the police could knock on the door and everything could change.
A dense film, made for thinking.
Monty Brogan's life seemed perfect: a lot of easy money, a beautiful girlfriend, everything perfect ... until the day a complaint hands him over to the authorities for drug trafficking and he is sentenced to seven years in prison. Now you have a few hours to say goodbye to the one you love, and to find out who gave it to you.
I confess I had other expectations about this film, but I found it very interesting how the film addresses the subject of repentance, as the main character, very well interpreted by Edward Norton, reviews his acts and perceives everything that goes lose. There is a lot of revolt in this film, where some nuances and hints related to politics, morals and society are perceived. From this point of view, it is a film that surpasses the entertainment, that can make think. Perhaps the degree of complexity is too high for a movie that tries to be commercial, and there are parts and subplots of the film that I would honestly have eliminated to make the film less dense and lighter for the public less understood.
In addition to Norton, the film features a good cast of actors, all at their best. There's no doubt Spike Lee knows how to direct a heavy cast. Barry Pepper was very good, Rosario Dawson is attractive and elegant without seeming vulgar, Anna Paquin is very young but already reveals some experience and commitment. Even veteran Philip Seymour Hoffman, who seemed far from what he could have done if he was at his best, knew how to give us a satisfactory performance.
25th Hour isn't exactly a bad movie, it's just a pointlessly long, tedious, boring movie. The acting isn't horrible (it isn't great), but the story has a central theme that tries to hard to be meaningful and moral. Also, the editing is choppy and exhausting. By the end, the movie turns into a preachy melodrama about not giving up on the life you want. Be warned; it's all cheese.
25th Hour is 2 hours long, but if you don`t fast forward it will feel like 25 hours.Allot of talk amongst friends, and people the main character knows. It`s a slow moving move with not much going on besides the thought of what is going to happen to the main character who will be going to jail. All his friends, and family talk about him like hes going to die. This is a backround movie to watch while you do something else.
With all the talent associated on this project I expected so much more. The central theme is apparent early on, but no real revelations or insights after first 15 minutes. Film ends up being a really slow movie with a desperate need for quality editing. The dialogue is self indulgent and irrelevant. Many of the scenes are often drawn out and quite honestly, pointless. The score is so inappropriate it's almost laughable. This film seemed more like a student effort... And not a particularly gifted student at that. Skip it