25th Hour

25th Hour

Caught this one at the $3 theatre recently. It turned out not to be a follow-up to the video game "11th Hour." Turns out it was based on a book by the same title> The title is never explained in the movie, though maybe it is in the book. I dunno, I didn't read the book, I only saw the movie. That's what I meant when I said I caught it at the $3 theatre. Whaddaya think I stumbled across the paperback next to the popcorn stand while waiting to see Harry Potter?

The short news is: 25th Hour is good. It's worth seeing. It's a drama, and it's not uplifting, it's not a feel-good movie. It's kinda depressing, actually. But it's good. There were moments that I found downright moving, though I'm an old softie so that's not saying much. I haven't seen a Spike Lee movie in a while. I saw a bunch of his early stuff, but I've missed several of his more recent movies. I skipped "Crooklyn" because I was so disappointed by "Malcolm X" (there wasn't a single super-powered mutant in the whole movie!), I passed on "Girl 6 because phone sex is not real sex, and it's just not the same to watch people talk on the phone. I didn't see "He Got Game" because I'm not into basketball, though I may have to end up renting it because, well, Milla Jovovich... I skipped "Bamboozzled" because Brendan Fraser selling his soul to the devil just looked dumb, even if the devil was Elizabeth Hurley. I passed on "A Huey P Newton Story" because I'm sick of '80s music and I didn't even like the song "Hip To Be Square" that much.

So when 25th Hour came out, I had no idea what it was supposed to be about, but I missed that bug-eyed, cricket-looking shrimp and Edward Norton has proven himself a fine actor in such classics of the modern cinema such as "Death to Smoochy," "The Score," and "Keeping the Faith." This movie was no disappointment. It was like "Death to Smoochy," but even better! Just kidding. 25th Hour was good. In 25th hour, Spike Lee and the novelist/screenwriter, David Benioff, take a moment which is common to every person, a moment which is often loaded with emotions which have probably built up over weeks, months, or years, and stretch it out over a day-long story, and give it to you in a two-hour-long snapshot. The moment of which I speak is the moment when we say goodbye to someone, people and places we love or have grown attached to.

You know the moment I mean. It's standing behind your parents' loaded-up station wagon, promising you'll write to your best friend, because you're moving away. It's the last minutes before you board the bus back to the real world after spending six long weeks at summer camp carving out a new identity for yourself, one who was actually cool and kind of popular. It's tearing down the Heather Locklear poster off your dorm room wall, the one you've stared at for nine months, and shaking your roommate's hand and saying, "have a nice life," and meaning it. That's all this movie is. It's Edward Norton's big, long goodbye. Beyond that, on one level, it doesn't even matter why he's saying goodbye or where he's going or what he's doing next. Because that's not the point of this movie.

In most movies you have a dramatic arc, in which the action rises to a climax, then there is a resolution. In a good story, the protagonist has been changed by his experiences. But this movie depicts more of a moment, stretched to movie length. It's a moment after which everything will change for him, and that is what gives it its power. It is also the moment at the end of the story he has been living up until now. It's the goodbye, which by definition is the resolution of this part of his story. But Spike Lee gives us the character's arc by revealing the event that led up to this moment, in flashbacks and expository dialogue. As the movie progresses, we learn simlutaneously who this character is, where he is in this moment, and how he got here. To his credit, Spike doesn't allow the flashbacks to become trite background paintings, nor do they overwhelm the picture, turning the present-day scenes to become a mere framing sequence. Expository dialogue can really weigh a movie down, but the emotions and the situation are compelling enough that I was interested enough in what they were saying to feel bored by lengthy exposition.

This is where I tell you briefly what the plot of the movie is. I have no problems describing scenes in a movie if I think you've probably already seen it, but a movie like this one, which you probably haven't seen and which I think you should, I am reluctant to spoil it for you. Even such general story elements as the premise are better learned through watching the movie, I think, as a filmmaker usually makes his film with the assumption that the audience doesn't know anything about the story, and it's part of the storytelling process to find these things out. And in the case of 25th Hour, even watching the movie trailer doesn't necessarily give you a sense of the premise or general plot. So I'll put a "Spoiler Warning" notice before and after it, so you can skip it if you plan to see the movie.

********** SPOILER BEGIN ***********

Edward Norton is saying goodbye. He's saying going away. And what makes the movie even more somber is the fact that he's going to prison, where he definitely doesn't want to go. The popular analogy is that of a man on his last day before he dies. I don't know where that came from, maybe the movie's press kit. Regardless, it has been mentioned by a number of reviewers. In some ways, going to his death would be easier than going to prison, because he knows in no uncertain terms how bad prison can be. And as he says goodbye, he knows he will spend years looking back at his life, thinking about these moments. So he has to do things right. I mean, if he were going to die, and cease to be, go into oblivion, he might just party himself senseless until the final moment comes. Or he might get worried about eternity and make peace with his religion, or go out and join every single one he can, just to keep his bases covered. But he's not going to die. He's going to live, and that means he's going to live with these moments for years to come.

Norton plays a man who isn't exactly an everyman. He seems like a decent guy, he has a bit of charisma. But he's going to prison, and it isn't for a crime he didn't commit, and he wasn't railroaded by a corrupt justice system. He was a criminal, he got caught, he got convicted, and now he has to do the time. He was a drug dealer whos tared out like so many regular-guy-drug-dealers we knew in high school or in college, that guy who you knew you could always score a joint from, who always had a bit of cash on him. After being kicked out of school, he started doing it full time. He got connections with the Russian mob, started dealing in the parks and playgrounds around New York.

He wasn't Nino Brown, or any of those standard-issue movie drug dealers. He was just a guy who you could score dope from, and he didn't feel any worse about it than his customers felt about doing the drugs. Then he got busted by the DEA with a kilo stashed inside his furniture. Now he's going up for seven years. Seven years isn't forever, but it isn't a walk in the park. Edward Norton isn't a tough guy (at least not in this movie) and he knows he's going to spend the next few weeks or months being brutally tortured, ending up spending seven years as someone's wife. When he gets out he will be a very different man, and life as he knew it will have ended forever. So for him facing prison, this is his last day of life.

This movie is more of a character study than a story. He says goodbye to everyone, the end. Not much of a plot. There are stabs at creating a narrative, as he ponders who might have turned him in. But the question of who is to blame for his situation is not really the crux of this movie, because ultimately he know that he is responsible. Similarly, he contemplates his options, which include prison, suicide, or running away as a fugitive. And while he plays at considering the alternatives, he knows there isn't really a choice, and besides, no matter what choice he makes, his life as he knows it will be over.

One thing the movie never really addresses is the reason he is free before he goes to prison. I always thought that they pretty much haul you off as soon as the trial is over. So I don't know what kind of deal he got where he was allowed to wander New York unsupervised for an unspecified period of time, before turning himself in at the prison.

*********** SPOILER END ************

The movie is a Spike Lee movie, though with Rosario Dawson as the sole person of color, you might not guess it at first. The character is Irish and his best friends are white. But the movie is not without its Spike-isms. They make their appearance sometimes abruptly, taking on a stylized quality that doesn't mesh smoothly with the grittier, shot-on-digital immediacy of the rest of the film. One scene in which a character in a nightclub makes her way through the crowd in a chemically-altered state has the actress apparently standing on the camera dolly as it backs through the crowd, allowing her to drift weightlessly past the other people. In another scene, reminiscent of "Do the Right Thing," Norton's character confronts himself in a mirror. He is filled with loathing for the situation he is in, and takes it out by spouting a stereotype-filled rant against everything and every group of people in the city of New York, most of all himself. And you really can't blame him.

Norton's character is morally ambiguous, though not unsympathetic. He's likeable. And you can't help feeling his dread as the day goes on. But even though you feel for him in his situation, you and he both know that he has no one to blame but himself, a fact which one of his best friends reiterates. And it's too late to do anything about it. So there's regret, there's loss, there's wistfulness. But we don't have to approve of what he's done to feel bad for him. He only thing we need in order to sympathize with him is the memory of what it's like to say goodbye.