"25th Hour" is a drama film released in 2002, director Spike Lee is a famous American filmmaker, he successfully won the Oscar Lifetime Achievement Award at the 88th Academy Awards, his works have a very strong racial consciousness, representative works include "Suspense Criminals", "Four Little Girls" and so on.
The cast of this film is also luxurious, not to mention the edward Norton familiar to domestic audiences, and the supporting roles of Philip Hoffman and Barry Pepper are equally eye-catching. The former is an Oscar-level film emperor who died early in his prime, and his works such as "Smelling a Woman", "Genius Ripley", "Capote" and so on are popular, and the latter belongs to the kind of powerful actors who "you may not know his name, but you have an impression on it".
Regardless of the identity of the drug dealer, Monty, played by Edward Norton, is a good person. He was willing to show kindness to an abused and dying dog during the drug trade, and although it was a dirty and disgusting meat in the eyes of his companions, he insisted on carrying it to the trunk. His companions were dissatisfied, believing that such an act would bring bad luck, and Monty didn't care, even laughing and talking about Murphy's Law: What will get worse will always get worse. The opening line suggests Monty's ending.
Sure enough, one day at home, Monty was lying in the bathtub with his hot girlfriend, Nachuli, whispering, and several strips suddenly visited with search warrants, and after some searching, the strips picked out the drugs and drug funds hidden by Monty in the sofa, which made him face a seven-year prison sentence. Monty knew in his heart that someone must have reported him, and the only people who knew where the drugs were hidden were his accomplice Koya and his girlfriend, Nachuli.
The film is about what happened in the 24 hours before Monty went to prison, and in the 25th hour, it was the time when Monty went to prison to serve his sentence.
When a person faces a major misfortune, he will have nostalgia for things that he has neglected, will think of friends who have been estranged, like a wanderer who is about to travel away, and feel that everything around him is so kind and lovely. He would do something different in order to keep himself from having regrets.
This morning, Monty led "Doyle" down the familiar street, looking intently at places he hadn't noticed before, trying to capture it all in his mind, and even giving away change to the homeless man in the corner. Monti returned to the middle school where she had attended and looked at the photograph on the wall of glory in a daze. From the basketball coach who passed by, he learned that the basketball assist record he once held had been refreshed by others, although he was quite unwilling in his heart, he could only accept it helplessly.
School is one of the most important turning points in many people's lives, and Monti is no exception. He was expelled from the school team for fighting, and since then he has begun to degenerate and slowly embarked on the wrong path of drug trafficking. When the coach felt sorry for him, he hurried to change the subject, because he did not want to waste time in self-blame, and the prison had time to regret.
In addition to trying to find the once young and decent self, Monty also came here to meet his young friend Jack, asking him to call another friend, Frank, and the three friends will meet tonight.
Philip Hoffman plays Jack, a Jew from a wealthy neighborhood who returns to the middle school he used to attend after college and teaches, and he is the kind of person who is dull and conservative, worried about himself and others all day long.
When grading students' essays, he gave high marks to the boys who wrote the "Selling Misery Sympathy" article, and for the fiery rebellious but quite talented girls, he only gave the other party a "b-", and his reason was that "the boys expressed feelings that he easily did not express". He is also a person who does not easily show affection, and he thinks that boys' behavior is very courageous. As a result, the girl came to question him, which made him very distressed, and the meeting of the other three tonight also troubled him, because they had not been in contact for a long time.
Barry Pepper plays Frank, a Wall Street financial practitioner whose high-pressure and fast-paced job makes him grumpy and neurotic, working desperately but only to afford the rent of a small house. When Jack expresses regret that Monty is in prison, he thinks it is hypocritical, saying that Monty is a drug dealer, driving a luxury car and living in a mansion, he uses the money of his conscience to satisfy himself, and he is to blame for going to prison. But he then mentioned that Monty and Jack were still his best friends.
Frank, though harsh-tongued, knows Monty very well, and he guesses that Monty will not commit suicide or escape, but will go to prison.
That night, Monti first went to the restaurant to meet his father, and he had come to this step today and had nothing to do with the family. The loss of his mother's company as a child, and his father's cowardly drunkard, were important factors that led him astray. When the father blamed himself for his failed education, he also stopped it. Monty understood that it had happened, that self-blame was useless, and that the last supper with his father could not be spent in regret.
In the bathroom mirror, Monty saw the phrase "fxxk you" written by an unknown person, and he broke out completely, scolding the people he had seen in his life, including his girlfriend, friends, and father. Monty resented everything, as if everyone was guilty, but only himself was unlucky to go to jail. Finally he calmed down and scolded himself: You bastard, you have all the flaws of all of them!
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After saying goodbye to their father, the three get together in a bar. Monty entrusts the adopted dog "Doyle" to the honest Jack to feed, pours Frankla aside, and pours out all the worries and fears he does not want to raise in front of his girlfriend and father to Frank, while the poisonous Frank does not say a word of hurt at this time, he just comforts his best friend, gives him hope, and cheers him up. Frank blames himself as a friend for not pulling Monty along when he was just learning badly, and blames Natchuri for enjoying Monty's money but not taking care of him, and even suspects that she betrayed Monty.
A friend is like this, he can speak harshly to you, look down on your behavior, be jealous of your wealth, but when you face misfortune, he is the one who makes you talk and relieve your worries.
From the gang leader Nikolai, Monty learns that the person who betrayed him is Kosya, the one who has the best relationship with him in the gang. He was completely disappointed in his "dao" life experience, and at the same time, his anger also made him see the true face of the gang, and he left his relationship with the underworld before leaving. At the boss Nicholas he got the final message:
Find someone in prison who has no friends or backers, beat him to the point where he bubbles up in the eye so that you get their respect, you have a pretty face, it doesn't do you much good, and a person can do anything to survive.
The next morning, as the three of them walk on the familiar dock, Monty remembers the boss's teaching that "it's not good to have a pretty face in prison", and he provokes Frank to punch himself in the face to the point of almost disfigurement, so that in prison there won't be a big man who will invade him with his arm against his back so soon.
It was getting closer and closer to reporting to prison, and the old father drove him on his last ride. On the way, he discovered how gracious the people he had once hated were.
His father advised Monti to flee, and he fantasized about life after escaping: they would cross the endless desert to a small town in the west, where Monty settled down and found a job as a waiter, and later Nachuli also came here, and the two married and had children, and they stayed together until they were old, and finally told this story to his descendants.
The film was released the following year after the "9/11 Incident", and director Spike Lee and his work are deeply influenced by the regional culture of New York, and he will certainly mention the disaster that occurred in New York in the film. In addition to the footage of the debris, Monty's choice is also a metaphor for Americans' choice of disaster, whether to flee west and build a new life like Monty's grandfather fled from Ireland to the United States, or to stay here to face misfortune and pain and wait for a rebirth after seven years.
When faced with disaster, if it is the old immigrants of Grandpa Monty's generation, they must be habitually choosing to continue to flee; when they arrive at the "second generation" father, they begin to struggle with how to choose, have the idea of escaping but have no determination to do it; and all the way to Monty's generation, everything is rooted in this, he is a native American, the material and emotional cost of escaping will be greater, so the idea of escaping is smaller.
At the end of the film, remembering the long and desolate soundtrack, in his father's fantasy of the 25th hour, Monty faces reality and chooses to go to prison.