Review
25TH HOUR
Starring Edward Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Rosario Dawson
Directed by Spike Lee
Now showing
Check listings
New York City. The name evokes so much – more than any other North American city, New York has a storied past. It was the largest gateway for immigration to North America, and has culture, wisdom and blood on its streets. New York has always been a place where dreamers migrated and outsiders fit in, if only because of its undeniable diversity.
Now the city sits with a terrible scar on its landscape. A wound felt across the world. A calculated message frighteningly misinterpreted. How this climate of aggression will play out remains to be seen, but the fact is it all started with New York City.
Spike Lee’s brilliant new film 25th Hour is among the first mainstream films to address the changes the city has gone through since 9/11. Leave it to one of New York’s finest artists to create a film that manages to discuss post-9/11 NYC, yet never presumes to offer any kind of "message." It’s about loyalty and regret and loss and so much more. Mere words are woefully inadequate.
Edward Norton – certainly one of the most gifted actors of his generation, and in fine form here – plays Monty, a drug dealer caught with his pants down by the Drug Enforcement Agency just a few unfortunate days early of going completely straight. The film focuses on Monty’s last 24 hours of freedom before taking the trip up to prison – one last day of celebration before being put away for far too long.
Norton has been an actor of infallible integrity (even the unfairly dismissed Death to Smoochy boasts a classic full-on Norton performance) and it’s hard to say whether Lee could have cast a better actor to play Monty. Where most actors would have come off as brooding, Norton is simply intense. Monty is a character who is more upset with himself than anyone else. In one absorbing scene, he rants about New York’s varied ethnic groups, saying that the city caused him to fuck up his life irrevocably. Yet he can only rant to his reflection.
Norton is surrounded with excellent supporting help, particularly Barry Pepper, Philip Seymour Hoffman and 2002’s hardest working actor, Brian Cox (Adaptation). Hoffman and Pepper play Monty’s closest friends, who have crises of their own. Monty toasts them, saying "Champagne for my real friends, and real pain for my sham friends" – it’s a test of their loyalty, and the kind of statement that will have a harrowing resonance as night turns to day.
25th Hour is a film of extraordinary power and beauty, and it builds upon itself, making each scene matter more as the film progresses. Any preconceptions you may have of Lee’s politics or his ostentatious style should be left at the door before venturing to see 25th Hour. While Martin Scorsese’s epic NYC story Gangs of New York seemed to be the first hint of his career coda, Spike Lee’s film announces that he is nowhere near done saying what he has to say. You owe it to yourself to experience it as soon as possible. |
