150 Word Review: '25th Hour' (2002)
The GOATee
This is the best movie about New York City in the years after the 9/11 attacks. Spike Lee’s 25th Hour is a snapshot of a wounded city and a day in the life of a drug dealer saying goodbye to his friends and family before serving a seven-year prison term.
The soon-to-be-jailbird is played by Ed Norton, who excelled, once upon a time, at playing intimidating, vulnerable nerds. The movie is a stage for a who's who of character actors, from Philip Seymour Hoffman's creepy school teacher to Brian Cox's working-class dad. Rosario Dawson stars as Norton's character's girlfriend; she's defiant and charismatic as always.
Lee is focused on the tick-tock of the clock, but he takes a moment to direct the hell out of a monologue between Norton's self-pitying pusher and his reflection in the mirror, an angry racist fantasy rant by an impotent white man. It's delirious filmmaking.