25th Hour [DVD] [2003] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

I love it when a first viewing just involves you and takes you away for a couple of hours. Even better is when a revisit a few years later still knocks your socks off! It's a quality story, given a mature direction from Spike Lee, one that benefits greatly from a group of characters that each have their own issues, but thankfully they never become annoying. Even more of a result, perhaps? Is that the actors in the main tryst do not falter one bit.Firstly, Spike Lee directs this piece seemingly free of the emotional anger that has driven many of his finest pictures, and the result is a somewhat beautiful ode to the post 9/11 New York City that he obviously loves. The story that unfolds is a cracker in itself, but it's actually the framing of this story in New York that is the film's main draw card. There are some gorgeous shots in this film, one as the camera zooms between two of our main protagonists talking in a high rise; which reveals a sombre and hopeful shot of ground zero. Secondly there's a sequence under an archway, which as the violence explodes it becomes crucial to the film, and then Lee fades out the sound to just reveal that of birds twittering away as if peace was being found.Edward Norton is one of the finest actors working today, and here he doesn't disappoint as the lead man trying to tie up all the loose ends of his life before he goes to prison for 7 years. Witness a scene as he rants in a mirror with poignant and impacting dialogue. There are {In my humble opinion of course} very few actors in history who could make this scene work to the degree of impact that Norton achieves. Philip Seymour Hoffman has a very sedate role and it's these type of roles where I think he excels, so much emotion whilst actually not doing much is an incredible feat, and Hoffman is just perfect in this piece. Whilst the best thing I can say about Barry Pepper is that he isn't out of place alongside these two {often considered} modern greats, he well holds his own, and in some scenes he mesmerises as he holds the court.The lead girl in the film does not fare so well, tho, Rosario Dawson is a sexy vision of delight in a tight fitting silver dress, but as the main female lead she falters in the company she is in. Perhaps that is a touch harsh? But although she doesn't stink the film out, I can't help feeling that a stronger female lead could of competed with the boys and really drove home some of the more critical scenes. Anna Paquin says her lines right and does enough to leave a mark, whilst Brian Cox, fine actor that he is, looks like he is just glad to be in a Spike Lee film. And by that I mean he gives his usual solid show with a tint of smugness about him. Bless him, he's still the governor.Personally it's a film that I find stays with me for a couple of days and one which I without hesitation want to see again and again over the coming years. With fine acting and directing, and pulsing a human emotive heartbeat for viewer and director alike, 25th Hour is a first rate success. 9/10

While much focus under reviews of the movie has been on Spike Lee's involvement in the film of the book and use of the post 11/9 setting, this in large part overlooks that the movie started with the great asset of a well written novel with a unique and timely story. In addition the using of the author David Beniofff to also write the screenplay seems to have ensured that much of the book's strengths were not lost in the transition to the screen.Despite the few sops made from the book to Hollywood storylines (an over emphasis on did the girlfriend betray the lead character now destined for 7 years in jail and the resultant conversion of the ending), there is much to admire in the movie especially in tracking the story mix of the course of the lead actor Ed Norton's last day of freedom and the flashbacks needed to explain why matters have turned out as they have.While the film's main emphasis is inevitably on Norton, what is more interesting is how he pales (relatively) against the ensemble of other support roles from the spot on Wall Street financial trader aggression of Barry Pepper; the adrift personna of introverted academic Philip Seymour Hoffman; the confused Puerto Rican girlfriend of Rosario Dawson and the pained widowed father of Brian Cox. The film makes great use of long set up fixed shots where the book's core themes of friendships and personal loyalties under pressure are endlesssly explored, with most dramatic effect in two scenes from an apartment overlooking the cleared World Trade Centre site and in a bar scene before the party moves on to a dance club.While Spike Lee deserves full credit for evoking the NY story and setting, this is definitely a production that is the sum of its many great parts (and the audio commentary from Lee and Benioff included as a DVD extra reconfirms this).

Two of his best film, for the first time on blu ray. Audio and video are fantastic and show the films qualities at their best. They are both stories about men in trap, with little time to accomplish their last mission for survival, and it all turns out to be a final sum-up of their lives. I adore the use of Copland's epic music in He got game: few people got it but I think there is a connection between the end of Clockers, where, for the first time, a "brother" leaves his environmente and discover America (something he's always watch on tv but never lived in life, apart from his dark side) and the use of Copland's music during basket game up to the compelling ending of the film: it's like Spike adopt and give new meaning to some stuff usually linked to classic America and applies it to those who never lived the "dream". It's no more a symbol of what the official clichès, it's like saying "We are America, too, and we suffer and struggle from the corners of the Empire". About 25th Hour what can I say? It has one of the most famous monologues in cinema history, it's another dream that does not come true, and it is another proof of Lee's versatility and point of view, that is not just focused on the Ghetto. After all, everyone has his own

I struggled with this one as I did not particularly enjoy it. Edward Noton is one of my favourite actors but he is to good for this film.