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The 25th Hour (2002)
The perfect way for me to sum up this film is like this, it's like overhearing a conversation in a bar, you hear what they're saying, they seem into it, but your just not interested. I feel like Spike Lee wanted to make his own version of Pulp Fiction, a dialogue driven film with a cast of colorful characters, but these characters and dialogue just aren't anywhere near interesting enough to carry a 2 hour film. There are multiple times throughout the film where I think that Spike Lee fell asleep and the actors just started to improvise because they ran out of dialogue.
Something else, people should watch this film to learn to appreciate tone, the same way people should taste Diet Coke to appreciate regular Coke. This film can not decide it's tone if death was on the line, at times it tries to be quirky, at others gritty, and sometimes inspiring. And there is also some really tacked on 9/11 imagery, I completely understand why due to the fact this film was released just a few months after the tragedy, but it is so just out of no where and depressing.
But, however clunky this film is, there is one moment of pure, disturbing brilliance. There is a scene where Edward Norton's character is talking to himself in the mirror, and he goes full Tyler Durden. He literally says f*ck everyone, he makes fun of every race on the face of the planet, and each insult is just as disturbing as the last, he even insults Jesus, as wrong as it is, it is still just so well done. The editing is also pitch perfect, you see everything you need to see for just the right amount of time for it to sink in. Long story short, it's one of the ballsiest scenes in cinema.
So not a fan of this movie, it's just not that interesting or entertaining, the tone is all over the place, but even then, I might still slightly recommend it for that one disturbingly brilliant scene.
Tell Rauld to pick you so we can get it going again.
