, a comedy drama with an urban reality. However it was his third film, the incendiary Do The Right Thing
, dealing as it did with race relations in New York's inner city, that really put Lee on the map as one of the finest, if controversial, film-makers of his generation. As time has passed, he has mellowed but his film-making only gets better, such as today's film, 25th Hour.
Monty Brogan, an excellent as usual Edward Norton, is a drug dealer with 24 hours to put his affairs in order before he heads off to prison for a 7 year stretch. He walks his beloved dog, Doyle, he says goodbye to his father, the superb Brian Cox and he goes out for one last night-out with his oldest friends. Jacob, a teacher played by Philip Seymour Hoffman who is in love with one of his teenage students shuffles through the movie, introverted, shy, but loyal to the end. Slaughtery played by Barry Pepper, a Wall St guy, cynical and arrogant but Monty's oldest friend.
Monty is saying goodbye to his life, his city and as the film moves on goes from grief to anger to acceptance. As the film opens, he is sitting on a bench by the river, thinking of how he got there, tinged with regret. An important aspect of this movie is that it was filmed shortly after 9/11 and Spike Lee devotes a number of important moments to the scars that are left on the City, his City, Monty's City, from the terrorist attack. At one point, we look into the crater left at ground zero. As Monty revisits his old haunts, he looks at the shrines to the dead fire-fighters in his Father's bar. 9/11 is ever present throughout the film.
Monty's anger is obvious, eventually exploding into a vicious rant at the whole city in a public toilet. Everyone is at fault in his eyes, you can feel the characters aimless anger:
Monty's anger is obvious, eventually exploding into a vicious rant at the whole city in a public toilet. Everyone is at fault in his eyes, you can feel the characters aimless anger:
Fuck the Chelsea Boys with their waxed chests and pumped-up biceps, going down on each other in my parks and on my piers, jiggling their dicks on my Channel!
Fuck the Korean grocers with their pyramids of overpriced fruit and their tulips and roses wrapped in plastic. Ten years in the country, still no speakee English. Fuck the Russians in Brighton Beach. Mobster thugs sitting in cafes, sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their teeth, wheelin' and dealin' and schemin'. Go back where you fucking came from. Fuck the black-hatted Hasidim strolling up and down the Street in their dirty gabardine with their dandruff, selling South African apartheid diamonds. Fuck the Wall Street brokers. Self-styled masters of the universe. Michael Douglas-Gordon Gekko wannabe motherfuckers figuring out new ways to rob hardworking people blind. Send those Enron assholes to jail for fucking life. You think Bush and Cheney didn't know about that shit? Give me a fucking break. Fuck the Puerto Ricans. Twenty to a car, swelling up the welfare rolls. Worst fucking parade in the city. And don't even get me started on the Dominicans,'cause they make the Puerto Ricans look good. Fuck the Bensonhurst ltalians with their pomaded hair, their nylon warm-up suits, their St. Anthony medallions, swinging their Jason Giambi Louisville Slugger baseball bats trying to audition for "The Sopranos." Fuck the Upper East Side wives with their Hermes scarves and their Balducci artichoke. Overfed faces getting pulled and lifted and stretched all taut
and shiny. You're not fooling anybody, sweetheart. Fuck the Uptown brothers. They never pass the ball, they don't want to play defense, they take five steps on every layup to the hoop, and then they want to turn around and blame everything on the white man. Slavery ended 137 years ago. Move the fuck on. Fuck the corrupt cops with their anus-violating plungers and their 41 shots, standing behind a blue wall of silence. You betray our trust! Fuck the priests who put their hands down some innocent child's pants. Fuck the church that protects them, delivering us into evil. And while you're at it, fuck J.C. He got off easy -- a day on the cross, a weekend in hell, and all the hallelujahs of the legioned angels for eternity. Try seven years in fucking Otisville, J. Fuck Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and backward-ass cave-dwelling fundamentalist assholes everywhere. On the names of innocent thousands murdered, I pray you spend the rest of eternity with your 16 whores roasting in a jet-fuel fire in hell. You towel-headed camel jockeys can kiss my royal lrish ass."
Eventually, Monty comes to see that he has nobody but himself to blame but not before each of his friends, and his father blame themselves for not being there to save him from himself. In the end, all that's left is fear. Fear of what awaits him in Prison. Monty goes to his fate and in that is a kind of redemption. He sees the errors he has made and we can have hope for him as he goes off to prison, because of that epiphany.
A very fine film, played out by actors at the top of their game. This is one of the best films of the last 10 years and worthy of your time.
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