Review of 25th Hour (2002) by Offworld_Colony — 19 Feb 2020

25th Hour is a movie based on a book that you can tell used to be a book. It's a faithful adaptation by way of taking the time to extrapolate and portray (and sometimes betray) these characters on screen, the way they snap at each other like only old friends and lovers can, the way they talk behind each others backs, but then have said back when the need arises. The source material's strengths (and script by a pre-Game of Thrones Benioff) are that the ramifications of the 25th hour are felt by all involved, and these characters are all of them culpable in their own ways, and corrupted, loveable, realistic, twisted and full of shades of grey. The dialogue is biting and lyrical, poignant and captures that real darkness. They accuse each other with the blinkers of themselves on.

Edwards Norton sings, an understated but typically tremendous performance, in fact, every cast member is at the top of their game, Barry Pepper, such an underrated actor is a perfect **** Rosario Dawson plays young and old so well in this movie it's like two different people and the incomparable Philip Seymour Hoffman is sad and hilarious. By the morning they all look, walk and talk like haggard older men, out all night, they let themselves be ugly.

Spike Lee has taken someone else's story and taken the state of his soul following 9/11 and he fused them into one story. Lee transposes his heartbreak, angst, pain and anger into this story, it's every bit his work as it is Benioff's book; not only was it cautionary and timely tale at the time, but its messages still resonate today. Spike Lee, a man who could describe New York City as "his city" made a film that reflected its shattered soul. When the camera frames Ground Zero out of focus for a conversation and then racks it into focus and Terence Blanchard's score swells, it's indelibly haunting and moving.

That scene, yes that scene. The Mirror scene. It's a bravura piece of filmmaking, writing and of acting; The jarring poetry of it stirs a dual idea of blame culture (more relevant now even than it was after 9/11) and then when this scene is reflected at the end, the very human idea that it's the things you think you hate about something, is more often than not, were the reasons you maybe actually loved about it.

During that scene and all over 25th Hour is the most soulful soundtrack I've ever heard; it's accusatory and soothing, it's almost constant throughout the film which is novel, and it seems to bleed a kind of unified pain; it has a sense of collective mourning, and the voices of the dead. It speaks for those that aren't there. It says the things that no one in the film does.

And that ending. I won't say anything about it suffice to say that it's also such a bold commitment, doubling down on the real pain of that 25th hour; just as powerful as the slow-start and slow reveal of what this film is even about. Even though I've never been in Monty's situation, there's that feeling; missing time, missed opportunities, passing over to new life, changes you made but never knew would happen, something like that, that pervades this entire film and makes it completely relatable in some esoteric and deeply human way.

25th Hour is my favourite Spike Lee movie. It has all of his hallmarks, his passions and his knowledge, but it's different, it's the New Yorker in him that made this film, not his race, it's a film that's more relevant than ever. It comes from deep within; when a person in this film embraces and the editing tries to snatch the same moment twice or three times, almost overlapping, you can palpably feel the characters try and snatch that moment back as if in protest to the shortness in time and amount of these moments left in their lives, or like the mind trying to remember the moments in the past that really mattered, when two people came together.