I recently renewed my Netflix account in an effort to catch up on some older movies that I felt I should have already seen, especially since I own a movie news website. I recently watched Escape from New York and 25th Hour. Of the two 25th Hour is easily the best and for the life of me I can’t think of one good reason to remake Escape from New York and I also don’t understand what is so iconic about the Snake Plissken character. Escape from New York isn’t bad, but a remake is far from necessary. You just have to wonder if the beginning of the film will still have a plane crashing into a building just before the President jettisons his escape pod. In this post-9/11 world I doubt it.
As for 25th Hour, 9/11 is looming all over this picture, and in some instances used quite effectively. The film somehow manages to get you to like (or at least have compassion for) three truly despicable people at the center of which is Edward Norton as Monty Brogan. Monty’s a drug dealer that has been caught with a kilo of cocaine in his sofa and the film recaps his final day of freedom before the start of a seven-year prison sentence, or his “25th hour”.
To help send him off you have his two friends Jacob Elinsky (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Frank Slaughtery (Barry Pepper). Of the two Jacob is certainly the more complex as he has a few intimacy issues to deal with among other things, but I thought Frank was the more entertaining one with Barry Pepper giving easily the best performance I have ever seen him give. Pepper is often seen as a thuggish bad boy, and in 25th Hour he is still not a “good” guy, but instead of seeming tough or actually being the stereotypical meaning of the word “bad”, he is more of a slimy grease ball. Frank is a stock broker that lives in a massive apartment that looks right over Ground Zero, but it doesn’t faze him a bit. Jacob asks if he is going to move, the response, “Fuck that, as much money as I dropped on this place – I ain’t moving. Bin Laden could drop another one next door and I ain’t moving.” Frank doesn’t give a shit about the suffering of those around him as long as he comes out on top, a theme that weaves its way all throughout this film.
The most interesting piece of the story is how it even manages to discard those that suffered at the hands of our lead character. Monty has made a shit load of money selling drugs. He bought a plush apartment, he bought his live-in girlfriend whatever she needed/wanted, he has paid down his father’s debts and on it goes. Everyone knows what Monty’s done and they still accept the money. They know it’s wrong but they don’t say anything, they accept the lifestyle. Even Frank admits that he has known Monty was selling drugs for the longest time, but he did nothing about it, nothing to help him. Monty’s father blames himself, blames his drinking. On top of it all, when Monty realizes he is going away he doesn’t regret selling the drugs, he regrets not getting out of the game any sooner.
“Six months. Six months before I got pinched I was going to come to you with the loot,” Monty tells Frank. “Put me in some stocks, put me in some mutuals. I would kick back, watch my coin multiply, we’re gonna get rich together. I thought, oh no, take out a little more to live on. I got greedy and just fucked myself.” If you listen to him describe it, you could compare it to just about anything in life, “If I had only done this.” His thoughts turn to getting raped in jail, all the while he never realizes how many lives he fucked over just by selling the drugs in the first place. The hypocrisy of the whole thing is what makes the film that good.
I am not sure if it bothers me that the consequences of Monty’s actions are never really shown, outside of one junky he turns away toward the beginning of the film. However, this is another scene that creates compassion for a dealer that has made a living out of feeding addictions. Does it really matter that in his “final hours” that he is only now not going to sell this guy some drugs?
What keeps a viewer involved with 25th Hour is first and foremost the dialogue. The writing is fantastic as David Benioff adapted his own book for the big screen. Benioff also penned the script for Troy (a film I really like) and got a bit over ambitious with Stay. He recently adapted The Kite Runner, which releases later this fall directed by Finding Neverland‘s Marc Forster. For the fanboys out there, he is also in charge of the Wolverine script.
There are several great moments in the film, but the best and most talked about has got to be Monty’s fuck you montage as he has an out-of-body experience and drops an f-bomb in the direction of every religious, ethnic, sexual and age group in New York City. He reserves a spot for Osama bin Laden and saves a little for himself as well. It is a remarkable scene proving what a talent Ed Norton is, and hopefully what we can expect from Benioff in the future.
This is hardly a review, but it is a recommendation. After watching this twice already I am still going to pick up a copy of my own. The ending is classic, but it is hard to tell if you feel there is some sort of redemption once you have seen it. I guess that is up to you.
Even though some people may be turned off by talky films dependant on dialogue, this is a film made for people that truly like movies and willing to invest in one over the long haul. Compare this to Escape from New York and you must be crazy. While the action films may get the big bucks I would say the $23.9 million 25th Hour pulled down worldwide isn’t too bad considering the $5 million it cost to make.
Everything said, I will leave you with the best scene of the film below and a link to buy your own copy should you be so inclined to take my advice. Next week I hope to have a look at Seven Samurai for you as I am now watching the 1956 Akira Kurosawa classic.
