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Idle 'Hour'
[Photos: Touchstone Pictures]
Edward Norton, right, spends one last day with buddies Barry Pepper, left, and Philip Seymour Hoffman before going to prison. |
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 9, 2003
Even Edward Norton can't redeem Spike Lee's 25th Hour, a post-Sept. 11 drama that provokes only boredom.
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Spike Lee has never made a movie as listless and ultimately pointless as 25th Hour. Lee works like a stunned artist out of his element, unsure of his next move and juggling too many subplots to make any decision matter.
Lee works best when he's on a mission, yet the drama of 25th Hour is so arbitrary that it's impossible to define one here. The movie appears to have been constructed around the coincidence that Lee had the first opportunity to incorporate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on his beloved New York City into a film.
For example, a dull scene involving two friends discussing the problems of a third goes on and on simply because ground zero is the backdrop. Twin spotlights marking where the World Trade Center stood inspire visually interesting opening credits that instantly overshadow the drama to follow. Osama Bin Laden is a boogeyman in the background of several scenes.
Moments like those could be brilliant if Lee made some salient connection between the attacks and his characters' destructive impulses. After the first half-dozen or so references to the attacks, with no benefit to the plot, 25th Hour unintentionally smacks of crass exploitation.
That may be a harsh judgment, but aside from boredom, it's the only reaction 25th Hour provokes. Without social commentary and populated by characters impossible to support, Lee's movie is too long, somber and misguided to matter.
The plot revolves slowly around Montgomery Brogan (Edward Norton), introduced in a scene where he rescues a dog injured in a fight for gambling pleasure. You see, Monty has a big heart for being such a callous heroin dealer. Flash forward to a year later, and he's spending one last day of freedom before a seven-year prison term. Later, Lee will fill in viewers on what occurred, but it isn't anything special.
Brogan's plans for his last-night bash include taking his lifelong buddies, Jakob Elinsky (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Frank Slaughtery (Barry Pepper) to a nightclub. We get to know enough about Jakob and Frank to make them interesting ideas for movies of their own, movies Lee desperately attempts to squeeze in here. Jakob is a meek schoolteacher with a crush on a sexy student (Anna Paquin). Francis is a cutthroat bonds trader, a budding Gordon Gekko.
Rosario Dawson, right, plays Edward Norton’s girlfriend in 25th Hour.
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We also get to know Jakob and Frank too well to make them fit comfortably into 25th Hour. The performances are fine but to no purpose. David Benioff's screenplay based on his novel is packed with redundancies and long-winded confessions of doubt. Everybody seems to be gearing up for a cataclysmic event that never occurs, while Lee constantly revisits one that did.
Even worse, 25th Hour doesn't bear the mark of its maker. Lee brings the most conventional approach of his career to this material, dropping his in-your-face technique for a funereal feel. Only one scene, Monty's raging at his mirror reflection about everything he hates about New York, uses Lee's rat-a-tat visual rhythms and blunt sociology to any worthwhile effect. This is a Spike Lee joint? More like Lee's junk.
25th Hour
- Grade: D
- Director: Spike Lee
- Cast: Edward Norton, Rosario Dawson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Pepper, Anna Paquin, Brian Cox, Tony Siragusa
- Screenplay: David Benioff, based on his novel
- Rating: R; harsh profanity, violence, nudity, sexual situations, drug references
- Running time: 134 min.
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