25th Hour Arthur Swift
After watching Spike Lee movies for the last fifteen
years or so, there are a few things I can confidently say about them:
1. They’re too
long.
2. They don’t
fully make sense.
3. They always
result in a violent ending.
4. They try to
say too much.
5. They’re
still worth it.
25th Hour is all of the above.
Some day, Lee will make a brisk romantic comedy that doesn’t try to
explain and redeem the world, but not this time. That’s fine, though, because 25th Hour is as thought
provoking as movies come. And the
frustration you usually feel walking out of one of his flicks is no longer as
intense.
Edward Norton plays Montgomery Brogan, a 31-year-old
Manhattan heroin dealer who has one day left before he reports to prison to
serve a 7-year sentence. And that night
Monty is going to be joining his friends for one last blowout before his
freedom ends. The friends he chooses to
hang with are not his dealer cohorts but his old buddies from high school, the
guys who knew him when: Frank Slattery (Barry Pepper) and Jake Elinsky (Philip
Seymour Hoffman). M
onty is also wondering how to deal with his girlfriend
Natural (pronounced Nat-u-ral, Rosario Dawson). He can’t get past the suspicion that she’s the one who turned him
in.
Frank is a Wall Street tiger and Jake a teacher at
their old high school. Though they’re
having a “going away party” for Monty, each of these men hover near the edge of
incarceration themselves: Frank is playing fast and loose with $100 million of
his bank’s assets while Jake is seriously contemplating sex with an underage
student. On top of this, Frank is the
most judgmental of Monty. When he talks
about Monty “getting what he deserves” for “feeding off other people’s
addictions,” the similarities are all too apparent.
While the movie is supposed to be about Monty and his
reckoning, it is much more compelling when Frank and Jake are center stage. The
poor kid from Bay Ridge who trades like a maniac to stay as rich as he can
drawn to the rich kid ashamed of his wealth who teaches in a low-paying prep
school. The movie soars when Jake
demolishes the Wall Street swine in a single sentence, showing he’s just as
tough as his cowboy friends are.
Hoffman may be showing off his typical excellence
here, but it’s Barry Pepper who’s the star.
The dynamic Roger Maris of *61 constantly keeps you guessing as
to how he feels about Monty. Does he
hate him? Envy him? Want his girlfriend? What’s really behind the macho Irish
persona?
Pepper would have been a better Monty. A large deficiency of 25th Hour is
Edward Norton. This nasal nerd is just
not convincing as a hardened, big time drug dealer and I can’t shake the
feeling that Norton has a career because his rich father got him into the
business. The same can’t be said for
Barry Pepper; he could be richer for all I know, but he doesn’t come across
that way. Good acting is about becoming
the person you’re playing, not making an earnest attempt. The only time Edward Norton was convincing
as someone not his type was in American History X, but he had the
muscles and skinhead to disguise himself.
Norton, however, is the “name” so Pepper has to bide his time. It’s coming soon, though.
It’s not that Norton’s wimpy looks aren’t ignored. It’s fascinating how everyone assumes that
Monty is going to be sold into sexual slavery once he is locked up; “punked
out” is what they call it. The only
question is how severe it will be.
Probably what will be the most talked about element of
25th Hour is Monty’s “Fuck you” rant.
When Monty is in the bathroom of his father’s bar he notices the words
“Fuck you” scrawled on the mirror above the sink. He launches into a diatribe about everything he hates about the
city. The Chelsea gay boys, the Asians,
the Arabs, the Bensonhurst Italians.
There’s something for everyone as seemingly every group in NYC is listed
... just when you say, “But what about...” he lists it. Unfortunately, the “Fuck you” rant is sure
to be attention getting, but it doesn’t belong here. It feels like it’s from Do the Right Thing or another of
Lee’s black vs. white relics.
Speaking of black and white, credit has to go to Lee
for the first realistic portrayal of white people in his films; they don’t feel
like caricatures anymore. Once Spike
said he was Woody Allen in reverse, that he couldn’t depict white people
because that wasn’t the world he lived in. Now he shows that Woody better make
the effort if he wants to stay relevant.
Then again, when was the last time Woody was relevant?
Odds and ends: Marlon Brando-lookalike Brian Cox as Monty’s troubled bar owner father and pro football player Tony Siragusa as a Ukrainian enforcer are exceptional. There’s too much Ground Zero, though. The plethora of shots of the city’s present look tries to prove that “Hey, this is the first big movie to feature the disaster area. Look at how many references I can make! Beams of light! Cranes and debris!” And that’s where Lee’s ultimate problem lies. His stories chug along fine until the last half-hour when the insecurity of not getting enough big scenes or ideas in comes into play. This should not be a 2 hour and 14 minute movie. Spike, do you think people aren’t going to take your seriously if you make something under 2 hours?
There’s still something so original to Lee’s films and as he ages he’s showing more restraint, which is a good thing. But he needs an editor. Obviously Lee’s always done the editing himself, despite whomever he credits it to, and at least he’s getting better at it. But I don’t know if he can ever make a great movie until he hires someone who isn’t a yesman.
I’ll be first in line when that brisk romantic comedy
is made...
Copyright 2002 Arthur Swift. Originally published December
22, 2002.