25th Hour Movie Review:


Controversial director Spike Lee serves up his latest project since the fall of the World Trade Center in New York City.

“25th Hour” follows Montgomery Brogan (Edward Norton), an Irish drug dealer who finds himself left with one day of freedom before he is sent to the “big house” for seven years. On his last day, Monty wants to reunite with his childhood friends Jakob Elinsky (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), Frank Slattery (Barry Pepper) and his beautiful girl, Naturelle Rivera (Rosario Dawson) for one club-hopping blowout. During the blow-out, Monty also wants to uncover the person who set him up to the cops and settle a deal with a vicious Russian druglord named Nikolai (Levani Outchaneichvili).

Imagine this if you will. You are going to a funeral for a guy you don’t even know. You watch as a lot of people talk about him as a great guy. You watch as people cry and try to deal with their loss. You are boggled and baffled as to why you are there. Do you feel anything for the guy in the end?

Now flash back to today. The guy is alive but the mood, world and atmosphere are the same as the funeral. He wants you to think of him as dead but he’s going to use a drinking binge to soothe his passing. This is roughly what you feel as you watch the 25th Hour.

Edward Norton mopes around a lot of the film as he delivers a great denial performance which eventually leads to him facing the truth. It’s a very solid and somber performance.

My favorite actor in the film is Barry Pepper who continues show amazing growth as an actor. He nails the character of Frank, who on one side is a slimy real estate banker and on the other a loyal to the core best friend. I really enjoy Barry on screen and I expect great things from him.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman continues his creepy seedy nerdy guy portrayal as he plays English teacher Jakob who seems to have a reluctant lust for his 17-year old student, Mary (Anna Paquin). Hoffman plays the weirdest of characters and they are always dealing with some sort of emotional problem. I really didn’t care for Hoffman here. He just seems to be regurgitating the same performance over and over.

I did like a lot the solo scenes between Pepper and Hoffman’s characters. I felt that I got to know more about these two guys than Norton’s Monty. There is one scene where they have a long conversation while looking over the wreckage of the World Trade Center that is a very powerful piece. Their moments and chemistry were the best parts of the film.

In every Spike Lee movie there always seems to be a blatant display of aggression. This aggression swells into militant scenes or controversial racial scenes. Spike has always loved to bang home his thoughts and outrages. This dictated in a very uncomfortable scene where Norton screams into a mirror. I hated that scene and the film’s exhausting ending.

As a whole “25th Hour” was a very hard film to sit through. I can only say that I enjoyed the Pepper and Hoffman scenes and that’s about it. I still only think of two Spike Lee films when I think of his best, “Malcolm X” and “Mo Better Blues”. “25th Hour” isn’t even in their league.

(2 of 5)

So Says the Soothsayer.

Dean Kish

‘25th Hour’ is a movie that’ll grab you by the collar, slap you in the face, ruffle your hair, do the whole Paul Vitti “YOU!!!” thing to yer cheeks and throw ya out of the theatre in a daze of amazement and exhaustion.

The 25th Hour isn’t so much about how life sucks, (though the mirror scene may tell you otherwise) but its more about how people stand by and watch a person decline into a cesspool of their own making, and not do anything about it.

The film follows ‘good’ drug dealer Montgomery Brogan (Norton) in his last day as a free man before being sent down for 7 in the county lock up. Monty plans to sort his life out in a couple of hours; he wants to square things with a Russian dealer, find out who ratted him out to the cops, be with his girlfriend and go clubbing with his old mates…(fuck all that other shit, he shoulda just hung out with his girl, I mean she’s Rosario Dawson for Christ’s sake!), but the real shit n’ giggles part of it is; that anyone could’ve set him up, including his girlfriend (slag).

Many people felt that Ed Norton’s character felt detached or icy, but I reckon that’s the whole point folks: Monty’s beginning to reflect on everything he’s done for the past 10 years, and he’s at the “what the fuck have I been doing all my life?” stage, it’s a lot like ‘400 Blows’ but with an adult protagonist.

A guy whose been ducking n’ diving all his life, and even in his last few hours of freedom, tries to piece together some kinda slapdash solution to all his problems, ya want him to find a way out, but the fatalistic undercurrent runs though this film with sledgehammer subtly, you know in the end he can’t win…or can he?

Ed Norton is the next DeNiro, there’s no doubt about it: the man's never made a bad film; I mean even ‘Red Dragon’ was OK. Ed’s character here has some obvious similarities with his role as conniving card-shark Worm, in John Dahl’s underrated ‘Rounders’ mixed up with a little bit of the old Tyler Durden cynicism straight out of ‘Fight Club’, but it doesn’t matter, for even if Norton played the same guy in every movie, he’d still do it with effortless style and believability.

Ed Norton is The Man, and ‘25th Hour’, though not on a par with the likes of ‘Fight Club’ is defiantly up there with ‘American History X’, ‘Rounders’ and ‘Primal Fear’ as another example of how good an actor this guy is (and before you ask, I’m not on the Ed Norton payroll folks…honest).

There’s some solid support from the likes of Anna Paquin, Rosario Dawson, the ever-reliable Brian Cox (playing Ed’s dad), the up and coming Barry Pepper (from ‘The Green Mile’ and err…’Battlefield Earth’—but we won’t talk about that) and man of the moment Phillip Seymour Hoffman (good in ‘Magnolia’ and ‘Flawless’) whose basically playing a grown up version of the role he had in ‘Scent Of A Woman’ way back in 92.

All in all; Spike Lee’s back, though he never really went away, because I for one, loved the intense and energetic ‘Summer Of Sam’ (though I could’ve lived without seeing that many shots of John Leguizamo’s arse!) and whilst Spike will never win over middle America, he’s still one of the best filmmakers out there and I think, deep-down, everyone knows that’s “the triple truth; Ruth”. ‘25th Hour’ is defiantly worth seeing for an involving storyline/ adaptation of the novel, good (surprisingly subtle) directing from Lee and some astoundingly powerful/moody performances from the cast.

8/10

Kashif Ahmed

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