Another Opinion Among Many

The 25th Hour depicts the last day of freedom for a young man before he begins serving a seven-year jail term for drug dealing. Prowling through the city until dawn with his two close male friends and his girlfriend, he is forced to re-examine his life and how he got himself into his predicament, which leads to a shocking, disturbing finale.

25th Hour is not a new movie.  In fact, it was created in 2002, but I haven’t seen all the movies out there, so the center aisle of the video store is sometimes a great treasure hunt.  For the most part, this movie could be considered a good find.  Spike Lee does produce at a level that one would expect to be watching a good movie.  Despite the uncanny and distracting resemblance of the star, Edward Norton to an aquaintance of mine,  I was entertained by this movie.

Norton puts in a strong performance as Monty Brogan and is backed well by the (now) star-studded cast: Philip Seymore Hoffman, Rosario Dawson, Barry Pepper, Anna Paquin , and Brian Cox.

In Spike Lee style, this movie is not just an attempt at a bit of fluff.  Mr Lee wants to bring it to another level and make this a story about a man’s inner struggle to reconcile what he’s done in his life, perhaps showing a bad apple turned good.  I got the impression, though, that Brogan wouldn’t have actually straightened out if he hadn’t been caught.  I’m not sure if this was the intention - to leave us a bit sceptical - or if it was just the way that Norton portrayed the character.  Interestingly, the film’s producer (and owner of the rights to the book The 25th hour), Tobey Maguire was going to play Brogan before Spiderman consumed his time.

There was a section in the film where Brogan is going through some sort of epiphany and started doing some sort of hallucinatory journey through his mind.  The images and subject material were entirely bigoted and narrow-minded, making one feel uncomfortable when watching.  I’m not sure that this was the best way that Lee could have directed or pieced together this scene, because I didn’t get the relavence.  This was the only detractor, though.  All in all, this was a solid watch and worth the price in the center aisle.