Directed by Spike Lee in 2002. Monty Brogan must go to the penitentiary in 24 hours in order to pass the seven next years in jail for possession of drugs. The police, obviously tipped by an informer, found the drugs hidden in a sofa of his apartment. In the morning, Monty is in a glum mood and asks his two only friends, Jacob Elinsky and Frank Slaughtery, to join up with him later in the night-club of his boss Uncle Nikolai who wants to see Monty before he goes to jail. Then, Monty visits his father and tells him that he cannot prevent himself from suspecting his own girl-friend Natural to have tipped the police force about the drugs. He shuts himself up in the toilets of the bar and, in an access of rage, yells out his hatred against everybody, particularly against all the minorities living in NYC.
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Later in the evening, Uncle Nikolai tells Monty that the informer is one of the members of his own gang, Kostya. Monty renounces to kill Kostya and, calmed down at last, asks Frank to hit him badly in the face so that his first days in prison won't be a nightmare for him. Then, in the morning of the following day, his father, while driving him to the penitentiary, proposes to Monty to flee. Monty who used the last 24 hours to make-peace with himself and with the others refuses.
The review of this Movie prepared by Daniel Staebler
25th Hour is the reason that movies are made. It digs to the very bottom of your gut to pull up unexpected emotions and then tickles them as if they were keys on a piano making the most beautiful and moving music. If you walk out of this movie having not learned something about yourself or at least looked at things a little bit differently, you were asleep.
Spike Lee has taken a great screenplay and made a movie that doubles as his own tribute to New York City. He might as well come out and say that New York City is the best city on the planet, but he doesn't, because he has more tact. He hasn't made this tribute to sell tickets; he's done it because he believes in it.
Monty (Edward Norton) has decided to go straight a hair too late. Police knock on his door with a warrant, interrupting a luscious bubble bath with his girlfriend Naturelle (Rosario Dawson). The cops know he has drugs, and they know exactly where to find them. Monty is going to jail and he has twenty four hours to say his goodbyes in one last all out party. He of course invites Naturelle and his two childhood buddies Francis and Jacob (Barry Pepper and Phillip Seymour Hoffman). An uninvited but welcome student of Jacob's also arrives in the form of jail-bait on overdrive, Mary (Anna Paquin). The friends use the evening to explore where they are in their lives and how they've grown to be such different people from a similar childhood. They must also contemplate on who could've ratted on Monty.
I have long respected Edward Norton and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as some of the finest actors in Hollywood, and here I only gained more respect for them. Norton plays a man torn up by his past and dreading his future while trying to wring every ounce of joy out of the present that he can. Hoffman is sincere as a lonely high school teacher who is tempted by the scantily clad Mary both inside and out of the classroom. Anna Paquin makes hearts beat a little faster and induced more than one bead of sweat on the brows of the men in the audience. Barry Pepper is fantastic as a conniving Wall Street trader who spends so much time hiding his true emotions only to dump them out on the table for everyone to see.
Writer David Beniof has written a superb script. The “Fuck You” speech was edgy and witty and delivered brilliantly by Norton. This was one of the highlights of the movie for me. It slammed all of the happy New York images that had been tossed around only to reveal a true picture of what it is like to live in the city that goes beyond all of the memorials and tributes that we can come up with.
New Yorkers will relate to this film, they will be able to understand some of what the characters have experienced and what it is like to be a part of this amazing community. Everyone else will get a glimpse into what it might be like to live in New York after such a tragedy. The movie stands on its own with out the New York tribute, but putting the two together makes the 25th Hour a truly amazing piece of art and a slice of history.
The review of this Movie prepared by Christopher Bryan
