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In Spike Lee’s 25th Hour, written by
David Benioff and based on his novel, Edward Norton plays Monty
Brogan, a drug-dealing kingpin who is living out his last full day
of freedom before being sent to prison for seven years. Living it
along with him are two friends from the old days, a feverish stock
trader (Barry Pepper) and a schlumpy English teacher (Philip Seymour
Hoffman), as well as Monty’s girlfriend (Rosario Dawson) and his
barkeep father (Brian Cox). Monty recognizes the misery his hard-drug
dealing has fostered, but mostly he blames himself for being greedy
and getting caught and screwing up his life. The filmmakers seem
to sympathize with his attitude: They de-emphasize the depredations
of dope while sanctifying Monty as a self-sacrificial lamb. How
bad could he be? After all, he tends to wounded dogs and is a lot
nicer than those burly Russian gangsters he reluctantly does business
with. And he got started in the trade as a working-class Irish-American
kid from Bay Ridge who was accepted into a private school and sold
grass to its well-to-do students. Lee periodically flashes on New
York in the throes of 9/11 for that doomy effect, as if the city’s
distress and Monty’s were part of the same emotional continuum.
This is romanticism of a rather low order. The only time the film
really snaps out of its anti-hero-worshipy torpor is when Monty
works up an aria of hate toward New York and just about everyone
in it, himself included. It’s a multiculti litany that stretches
from Pakistani cabdrivers to Hasidic diamond merchants, and even
though it doesn’t really have much emotional connection to the Monty
we see the rest of the time, at least his outburst has the virtue
of being outrageous in the vintage Lee manner. It’s the spritz that
refreshes. (2 hrs. 14 mins.; PG) —PETER RAINER.
Opens December 20
• Showtimes
& tickets (movietickets.com)
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