Inside Man

Director Spike Lee

INSIDE MAN            B+                                                                                                                 USA  (129 mi)  2006  d: Spike Lee

You know, there’s a famous saying by the Baron de Rothschild, “When there’s blood in the streets, buy property.”                                                                                                 —Madeleine White (Jodie Foster)

A huge commercial success for Lee, one of the few features he directed that he did not write, his only feature to be No. 1 at the box office in the first week of its release, ultimately grossing $185 million, more than four times the budget of $45 million, his most profitable film to date, yet his plans for a sequel never materialized, reassigned elsewhere as INSIDE MAN: MOST WANTED (2019), a tepid film that ended up on Netflix.  Beginning with a Bollywood sounding opening song, Inside Man " Chaiyya Chaiyya" (Version RB) - YouTube YouTube (7:22), adding a cultural universality which plays in perfect precision to a distinctive New York City opening montage, while Dalton Russell (Clive Owen), a criminal mastermind in close-up, speaking directly to the camera, narrates a robbery taking place at the main branch of the Manhattan Trust Bank, a fictional institution located at Wall Street and Broadway, where capitalism intersects with show business, confessing to a perfect crime, apparently from an enclosed prison cell, so the entire film may be playing back in flashback mode.  Taking control of the bank while disguised as house painters, each of the four bank robbers are wearing sunglasses and masks, as they immediately dismantle the surveillance system while taking customers and bank employees as hostages, blindfolding and separating them, tying their hands behind their backs, then switching them from room to room, never allowing hostages or viewers to be certain of who they are, identifying themselves only as derivations of the name Steve (Carlos Andrés Gómez), like Stevie (Kim Director), or Steve-O (James Ransone).  Immediately the bank is surrounded by a horde of NYPD officers as well as snipers on the roofs, commanded by Captain Darius (Willem Dafoe), all targeting the entrance.  Each time the robbers release a hostage, they are accompanied by a message, yet police immediately point their guns and handcuff them before taking them away, each one viewed as a suspect until proven otherwise.  One is a Sikh bank employee, Vikram Walia (Waris Ahluwalia), who is mandhandled by the police, thinking he’s carrying a bomb as he looks like an Arab, causing him to lose his turban, a symbol of religious observance, showing no regard whatsoever for his loss, despite his repeated pleading, where the belligerence of the predominantly white NYPD is all-consuming, wearing their pronounced racism on their sleeve, as they know only one gear, brute ferocity, which suggests a crude indifference.  It must be said, few capture the rhythm and earthy style of New York City like Spike Lee, who seems to delight in the way people express themselves, using different pronunciations, different inflections in their speech, all seemingly spewing profanity, with the director having an eye and ear for detail, often injecting humor, beautifully encapsulating a city as only he can.  Opening in the theaters at the same time as another thriller, V FOR VENDETTA (2005), it’s interesting that both use a similar plot device in the commission of a crime, dressing all the hostages up in the exact same masks and jump suits that they are wearing while V improbably sends Guy Fawkes masks to everyone in London to thoroughly confuse the police establishment, in each case allowing the criminals to perfectly blend into the crowd.  This has the makings of another bank heist caper, and even pays homage in the script to Dog Day Afternoon (1975), using two actors recreating similar roles from that earlier film, a hostage, Marcia Jean Kurtz, and a pizza delivery guy, Lionel Pina, while the pizza itself comes from Sal’s Famous Pizzeria, a reference to Do the Right Thing (1989), but this one surprisingly has other hidden motives buried beneath the layers of the 9/11 rubble, namely the politically connected cover ups of New York City’s finest, who conveniently make deals to keep the real problems from ever surfacing.  Shot by Matthew Libatique, mostly with handheld cameras, using a distinct visual style, favoring the long, continuous shot, this is a film simmering with a cross-section of New York City sounds and surfaces, featuring a variety of ethnic groups, even a street-wise 8-year old child (Amir Ali Said) playing what amounts to the world’s most violent video game.  Unafraid of the bank robbers, as he’s from “Brooklyn,” he tells the police he actually identifies with the robbers, as they’re just trying to get paid.  The same can not be said for the rest of the hostages, most of whom cower in fear, made to strip down to their underwear and wear identical outfits, forced to hand over their cellphones to the robbers, yet one wise guy tries to outsmart them, quickly identified, pulled into another room, and through a translucent window of a closed room, we see him getting the snot beaten out of him, a clever device that keeps all the others in line.  The shot through the window, captured in real time, shares the same spatial viewpoint of the hostages, where viewers see what other hostages see, which allows us to easily identify with them.  Another shot shows Russell with the young kid sitting alone in the bank vault, offering him a pizza slice and a drink, seen chatting casually, a shot that allows viewers to identify with the bank robbers, as they’re not seen as such bad guys, demonstrating compassion, going out of their way to take an interest in this kid, undermining the stereotype of a criminal mentality.  This shot actually expands the ambiguous nature of Russell, whose motives remain unclear throughout, as they’re not really interested in taking the money, but seem obsessed by the contents in one particular safety deposit box.  This subverts the motives of a typical bank heist film, while confusing both the cops and audiences alike, adding a level of psychological mystery and intrigue not normally seen in genre movies.            

Denzel Washington plays another cocky police officer, Detective Keith Frazier, along with his sidekick, Bill Mitchell (Chiwetel Ejiofor), making a living as a smooth-talking hostage negotiator.  In what appears to be an homage to SHAFT (1971), he keeps his girlfriend (Cassandra Freeman) simmering in the sheets while he’s out taking care of the city’s business, matching wits with the bad guys.  Here he’s under police investigation on a drug case that’s suspiciously missing $140,000, but due to a convenient police personnel absence, he’s called into action on a bank heist in progress with hostages.  Once this makes the news, Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer), the bank CEO, a financier with something to hide, goes into action to protect his shameful secrets which are contained in an unregistered safety deposit box, calling in a mysterious, ultra-professional power broker, or fixer, an unusually perky Jodie Foster as Madeleine White, a shadowy figure dressed in stiletto heels and sharp designer suits who greases the wheels for the super rich and either clears the way for what they want or makes their problems disappear, all for huge sums of money.  The rest of the film unravels through various hierarchies, as there’s a chain of command in place at every level, the perpetrators of the crime, and those responsible for providing law and order, where White, in speaking to Frazier, makes it clear she is working above his pay grade, setting him straight, so to speak, reminding him of “his place.”  In other words, blacks are not welcome in the ultra elite confines of Wall Street business transactions.  The objectives of both remain obscure and unclear, covered up in a politically recognizable public persona that we all see on TV, where motives and explanations remain fairly standard, while their real purpose remains secretive and hidden and may never see the light of day.  Both sides secretly plant security microphones on each other, with the police foiled by a mastermind crook who is on to their techniques, as what the police microphone picks up is a long drawn-out speech by a former Albanian President, now deceased, alerting them that their surveillance efforts failed.  Back and forth negotiations have also stalled, with Frazier making no headway, yet he remains baffled by the case, developing a healthy respect for his counterpart who seems to anticipate his every move.  In a climactic moment, as the police are about to send in a SWAT team, Frazier becomes aware of a microphone sent out with one of the earlier hostages, allowing the robbers to listen to the police plans the entire time, including this police raid storming the bank.  Having prepared for this, the robbers gather all the hostages, mixed together with the robbers themselves, all dressed alike, and release them out the front door, where it’s virtually impossible to detect differences between victims and perpetrators.  The police point their guns, push everyone to the ground, and handcuff each hostage, while taking them into custody on police buses.  As it turns out, none of the hostages recognize any of the robbers, and perhaps more surprisingly, no money was taken.  According to the bank, nothing is missing, so no real crime occurred.  Frazier is ordered to bury the case, though obvious questions remain as to the unanswered motive, which has cleverly been kept secret, though Frazier is on to the missing safe deposit box.  What typically happens is that anyone getting too close is either transferred, fired, or their careers ruined.  In this film, Washington’s cop mixes it up with some pretty exclusive company.  Lee pitched the film to Hollywood executives as a star-ridden movie that, unlike his previous films, did not contain a racial or polarizing narrative.  The promotion of the film accentuated a typical box office strategy of an action-packed bank heist thriller, omitting Lee’s name from the marketing campaign, as studios found him too didactic and controversial politically, only to discover a suspenseful narrative, written by first-time screenwriter Russell Gewirtz, a former lawyer, that was actually about contemporary racism, anti-Semiticsm, and a lust for capitalist greed, with an indirect commentary on the Patriot Act’s forced standardization of national diversity, centered around New York and the homogenization of the city’s culture.  One remarkable aspect of the film is the utilization of film noir and neo-noir to construct a counter-narrative on security and surveillance that causes confusion, pointing out the prevalent use of cameras both inside and outside the bank, while also taking a look at the erasure of history through the narrative and stylistic conventions of an action film.  This film makes surprising references to the Holocaust, noting what kind of blatant thievery was taking place by the Nazi’s, as Jews transported to death camps were in no position to protect their financial interests, so their wealth was stolen blindly by their adversaries, then covered up in the aftermath of war, with some cashing in their stolen investments to make a killing, showing a structurally corrupt system still at work today.  Basically Lee made a film within the studio system that shrewdly criticizes the system.  Without ever offering a history lesson, this is key to understanding the underlying complexity of this film, and what really makes it worth watching, as sprinkled throughout Lee’s career his movies have taken an interest in critical moments in history.  Many viewers, however, missed this aspect of the film, believing he left his moral concerns behind, finding the film’s lack of a political agenda refreshing.

One of the few films that connected 9/11 to the impending stock market crash of 2007 (Financial crisis of 2007–2008 - Wikipedia), with a multitude of bank foreclosures, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, where minorities took the greatest hit, and few were ever held accountable.  Fittingly, most of the action is set on Wall Street.  In the period after 9/11, the pressure on dissent reached nearly all aspects of American society, with unjustified arrests, interrogations of demonstrators, a presence of FBI agents on college campuses, libraries forced to inform federal authorities about books patrons checked out, citizens removed or arrested from malls for wearing “peace” T-shirts, with students and teachers censored from schools and universities.  While those acts are blatantly unconstitutional, the Patriot Act allows for unprecedented state surveillance, signed literally weeks after the terrorist bombings with virtually no public debate, and with vast public approval, many believing it would help authorities track down the enemies living amongst us, yet it led to routine mistreatment of citizens, no longer accorded civil liberties, as anyone could become a suspect in the war on terrorism.  Open suspicion by police is an underlying theme of the film, as anyone displaying Arab descent is immediately viewed as a criminal, openly mistreated, denied any rights, with ordinary citizens showing little concern for what they routinely see happening.  In fact, despite being intimidated and tied up by the robbers, threatened to be killed, none of the hostages show any willingness to cooperate with police, as Lee cleverly shows New Yorkers are hardly united behind law enforcement.  This film borrows from 80’s film noir, like Michael Mann’s Thief (1981), or William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in LA (1985), including an expressionistic use of architecture, a restrained color palette, exaggerated and dramatic shadows and silhouettes, with a giant American flag draped over the New York Stock Exchange building.  One of the talks between Frazier and Madeleine White takes place in front of a mural of the American flag, with the stripes replaced by the words “We will never forget.”  With a screen time of just seconds, happening during a furious rush of excitement, many never recall even seeing this blatant visual cue, while a discussion among hostages attempts to evaluate whether the robbers could be terrorists, with one emphatically denouncing that prospect, a Columbia professor, a lawyer with experience in these matters, claiming they are simply robbers.  Again, while brief, this connects the film to 9/11, educating the audience that robbers are different than terrorists, proven by the fact that they all get out of there alive.  What we’ve really learned from this bank fiasco is that the system is corrupt, that news reports barely touch the surface, as only a few involved actually know what happened, with the real crime remaining hidden under layers of subterfuge, shrouded in ambiguity, yet Frazier has the wherewithal to see it through, turning him into a neo-noir hero, reminiscent of Jack Nicholson’s Jake Gittes in CHINATOWN (1974), where his moral ambiguity is hidden by Denzel Washington’s charismatic performance.  At the time of the film’s release, it was viewed almost exclusively as an electrifying commercial thriller, with little else read into it.  As a result, while much has been written about Spike Lee’s films overall, very little critical evaluation has been written about this particular film among researchers or critics alike.  While the thriller aspect is well-made, suspenseful, and holds our interest throughout an anxious 24-hour day, from the morning of the heist until the next morning, with a few bleached-out hostage interrogation scenes that are told out of order, it’s the unpredictable people factor that rises above other similar films, such as the story of the beat cop who discovered the robbery in progress, Sergeant Collins (Victor Colicchio), who later tells Frazier the story of how a gun was first pointed in his face, using pointedly racial imagery, or the actions of the police SWAT team, treating all innocent hostages just like criminals, especially those fitting Arabic profiles, or an interesting turn of events which requires, of all things, an Albanian translator, who negotiates her services only if her basketful of parking tickets can disappear.  These little slice-of-life interludes humanize this otherwise typical genre film, yet the movie changes gears and moods when it gives way to subtextual commentary about the corrupt foundation of global capitalism, including racial and cultural tensions associated with globalized problems, like the formation of an international workforce.  As an aside, Frazier distinguishes himself by being so much in touch with the multi-ethnic sounds of the street, rising to an art form, while the clueless and out of touch language of the rich white suits at the top, such as the interplay between the mayor, Foster, or Plummer, the proverbial “powers that be,” stands in stark contrast, speaking the language of Wall Street.  Seemingly lifeless and inert, a vague, empty aspect of an empowered culture, where you wonder who they could possibly speak for in terms of representation, yet this speaks volumes about the cultural divide, as they are products of a privileged elite, not really in touch with the common man, which is just another distinguishing aspect of the film, and part of the intelligence and skillful pacing that is established throughout.  However, the coolness factor of both Owen and Washington is superb in a test of wills between two indomitable characters, while brewing just under the surface are wheels in motion where they could easily fly off the handle at any second, yet both maintain a charming wit and calm that perhaps no one else in the business could provide.  

25th Hour

 

Edward Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Spike Lee

25th HOUR       A                                                                                                                       USA  (135 mi)  2002  ‘Scope  d: Spike Lee

A love letter to New York City and an existential meditation on trauma, offering a definitive portrait of the city after 9/11, while also expressing a personal and poetic response to the lives of those 9/11 victims, whose lives will forever be entangled in that one event, where everything changed after that day, where the future was no longer the future, where hope disappeared, where all the things that could have happened would, for certain, no longer happen.  In an instant, it was taken away.  Largely overlooked at the time of its release, this faithful adaptation of David Benioff’s debut novel of 2001 was actually written before the terrorist atrocity, yet this is Hollywood's first contemplation of an openly raw national trauma produced by the attacks of September 11, 2001, released just sixteen months after the event, with the New York setting paying tribute, as the opening credits are a memorial to the terror attacks by projecting two powerful Tribute in Light beams into the New York night sky from the site where the Twin Towers used to stand.  It’s significant to note that no other Hollywood filmmaker would address this crisis until nearly five years after the attacks, and one might argue it’s still the only one that really matters, the one that best connects with the acutely felt psychic devastation from the massive scope of the tragedy, with most Hollywood studios deleting all references to the Twin Towers, supposedly not wanting to remind audiences of a city in deep mourning and shock, though by that time any citizen or non-citizen, criminal or non-criminal, risked being treated by U.S. authorities as a potential terrorist.  Often described as Spike Lee’s white film, along with Summer of Sam (1999), as it was his first to extensively focus on a white protagonist, set in a predominantly white environment, a departure for this director, deviating from his focus on black protagonists and settings.  Brilliantly conceived even prior to the attacks, the film is more about a moral reckoning than any narrative focus on 9/11, which is never talked about directly, only dealing with it on a peripheral level, beautifully filmed by Rodrigo Prieto in Super 35mm widescreen on location in the five boroughs of New York City, yet incorporating the Ground Zero excavation site into the filming, as Lee made the wise decision to subtly integrate the destruction of that day into his absorbing story, exercising surprising control and restraint, attributes Lee is not known for, constructing a raw and poignant look at the underbelly of America, as seen through some of the soiled and seamy lives of a few individuals in New York, all searching for redemption, for another chance to do it right, with some terrific performances all around, but easily what is most powerful are the poetic references to 9/11, and how the strength of the characters are so indelibly rooted to New York City.  For instance, during the infamous “Rant Scene,” a long monologue entitled the “fuck monologue” where Edward Norton as Monty Brogan (named after Montgomery Clift) stares into a bathroom mirror at his father’s bar and curses the five boroughs of New York and the people living in it (which also strangely highlights the city’s diversity), even cursing his father, a bar owner for “selling whiskey to firemen, and cheering the Bronx Bombers.”  In that bar, there’s a memorial to 11 fallen first responders on the wall, a tribute to actual firefighters from Rescue 5 based out of Staten Island, New York (each named in the closing credits) who tragically lost their lives at the World Trade Center on 9/11.  Monty’s riveting speech may be the most memorable sequence in the film, offering a quintessential connection with all New Yorkers who live and breathe through that speech, as he’s summing up a citywide anger that flows from every street corner, becoming a time capsule reflection of how they felt at that time, maligned and scorned, left for dead, yet rising from the ashes of the collective dead.  This film is basically a contrast between the verticality of the skyscrapers, representative of wealth and prestige, and an unseen criminal underground, defined by Monty as a successful drug pusher, until caught, becoming a battle of the two souls of the city.  Thankfully, there are no drug deals in the movie, which does include guns and thugs, but no shootouts.  Instead, the visual display of the rivers and city bridges is astonishing, from the East River and the Hudson, showcasing the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Verrazzano, Williamsburg, and George Washington Bridges, with visits to Central Park and Carl Schurz Park, while also taking place in Brooklyn, specifically Dumbo, and Manhattan, highlighting Yorkville, accentuating the architectural beauty and diversity of the city, while the other man-made counterparts are Wall Street’s skyscrapers, a citadel of power and a gateway to opportunities, and Ground Zero, a decimated reminder of a catastrophe hanging over New York with apocalyptic implications, while Jersey-boy Bruce Springsteen (whose mother was from Bay Ridge in Brooklyn) sings over the end credits, Bruce Springsteen - The Fuse (RARE "25th Hour Remix") YouTube (5:29).

Some of the most suggestive scenes of both the film and the novel are the clever insights in the use of New York waterfront areas, namely the Yorkville esplanade on the East River, where most of the 8000 Moses Benches designed for the 1939 World’s Fair still remain offering choice views of the East River, while nearby the luxurious brownstone homes on the Upper East Side where Monty lives offer an oasis of tranquility, allowing him a momentary escape from reality, where his quiet 2-room apartment offers a sanctuary from the street noise and jarring congestion of urban life.  Monty and his father James (Brian Cox) are Irish immigrants from the Bay Ridge neighborhood in Brooklyn, where his father, a former firefighter and recovering alcoholic, still lives and works in his bar, while Monty’s best friend from childhood, Frank (Barry Pepper), works as a stockbroker on Wall Street.  Monty’s girlfriend Naturelle (Rosario Dawson) is Puerto Rican and from the Bronx, where her mother still lives, while his other best friend Jacob (Philip Seymour Hoffman), born to wealthy Jewish parents from Park Avenue, is a sheepish prep school English teacher.  With the exception of Jacob, all come from working-class backgrounds representing the American Dream metaphor for upward mobility, making the most out of their opportunities, yet with each it comes with a cost, as Monty is a drug dealer connected to the Russian mafia, where his father’s bar was paid for from drug money.  Frank has no private life from working such long exhaustive hours, while Naturelle could never afford to live in Yorkville were it not for Monty’s money.  They are connected to changing neighborhoods, a mosaic of different ethnic groups, as Bensonhurst is now primarily an Italian neighborhood, while the Bronx is part of the postwar migration of blacks and Puerto Ricans coming from East Harlem.  This culture mix is not without conflicts, racial and otherwise, as represented in Monty’s extended “Fuck You rant,” Edward Norton Rant 25th Hour YouTube (5:14), among the more blistering scenes in both the book and film, where the words “Fuck you” are written on a bathroom mirror, triggering an angry tirade against all the ethnic groups, social classes, and neighborhoods, “from the projects in the Bronx to the lofts in SoHo, from the tenements in Alphabet City to the brownstones in Park Slope, to the split-levels in Staten Island,” lambasting Pakistani and Sikh cab drivers, gays, panhandlers, Korean grocers, Russian mobsters, Wall Street brokers, Hasidic Jewish jewelers, Upper East Side wives, brothers playing basketball, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Italians, the poor, the wealthy, blacks, the NYPD, Catholic priests, Jesus himself, Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, and his friends and father, an insightful reworking of the underlying racial fears that dominate those changing neighborhoods, always afraid some new group will ultimately push them out or redefine the distinctive character of the neighborhood.  After a prolonged stereotypical rant blaming all the others, conceived as a montage of horizontal tracking shots of ethnic groups that draw his ire, where his contempt is met with an equal amount of ardor and love, as these are the experiences that define him, he finally turns to himself, suggesting he screwed up and got caught because he got too greedy, saving much of the vitriol for himself, as he had it all and threw it away, claiming he blew it, mirroring a fatalistic refrain heard at the end of Easy Rider (1969), now staring down a seven year stretch in prison, where the story is essentially his last 24-hours of freedom, with another hour added on to travel to the prison and turn himself in. One essential, underlying truth behind this prolonged and highly personalized invective is that what he’ll miss most is the city itself.  A flashback sequence reveals the day authorities searched his apartment, knowing full well where everything was stashed, apparently sold down the river by one of his closest friends.  With so much compressed into so little time, it portrays a lifetime lived and lost, consumed by guilt over the sudden finality of it all, feeling as if he betrayed his friends and family, yet ultimately has no one to blame but himself.  Essentially the psychological examination of a convicted drug dealer serves as a microcosm of New York City’s post 9/11 psyche, addressing the here and now in ways that took audiences by surprise, as things weren’t going to be the same for either Monty Brogan or for the city, where Monty’s attempts to come to terms with a future in prison parallels the city’s attempt to readjust to the changes wrought by 9/11.  The mournful Terrence Blanchard score was the only Academy Award nomination, as Hollywood was simply not yet ready to confront such a reality-based provocation that so profoundly touched a raw nerve.  

Offering a brief window into the lives of Frank and Jacob, we see Frank is something of a hotshot cowboy hopped up on Red Bull, a lone wolf taking huge chances with other people’s money, defying the cautionary measures installed by his employer to prevent that sort of thing, so he’s already living on the edge, while Jacob listens to Mary D’Annunzio (Anna Paquin), one of his students read a literary passage, yet his entire focus is on an exposed belly tattoo, utterly fascinated, unable to take his eyes off of it, as she reveals a fierce individualism that seems to possess an irresistible sensuality, inconspicuously flirting openly with him.  Despite his rather reserved and introverted exterior, he’s already creating sexual fantasies in his head.  In each instance, the question is will they cross the line?  Before they meet Monty, Jacob meets Frank in his 32nd floor window apartment overlooking Ground Zero, an ominous view that resembles the surface of the moon, with both chatting casually, yet that backdrop has unmistakable meaning that supersedes anything else in the film, becoming a defining moment and one of the more uniquely creative shots in any Spike Lee film, as it can’t be confused or mistaken for anything else.  It’s a literal shock to the system.  Meeting afterwards at the Bridge Nightclub, a packed house in the Dumbo warehouse district in Brooklyn with a line down the block waiting to get in, Monty has VIP status, with a complimentary bottle of champagne gifted to a special table.  Borrowing a line from Francis Bacon, Monty offers a toast, “Champagne for my real friends, and real pain for my sham friends,” where an open wound of suspicion regarding who turned him in still haunts him, suspecting Naturelle, but she has no motive, depending on him entirely.  Remove the gravy train and she moves back in with her mother in the Bronx.  Nonetheless, he remains anxious and openly suspicious of everyone.  The long nightclub sequence is the centerpiece of the film, much of it shot in a blue hue, where Naturelle and Mary hit the dance floor with jazz funk music pulsating in the background, Cymande performing "Bra" Live on KCRW YouTube (4:29), given a relaxed and evocative subterranean vibe that veers from in-your-face to the surreal.  Downing shots and drinking heavily, their defenses are lowered, where Monty has an appointment with club owner Uncle Nikolai (Levan Uchaneishvili), the sleazy Russian mobster behind the drug operation, testing the waters, so to speak, to see where his loyalties lie, a sequence that explodes in unanticipated violence, yet there are hauntingly surreal moments of Jacob finally acting on his impulses with Mary, a lost innocence that only ends up sending shivers of guilt, while Frank, laden with his own guilt and self-loathing for never once trying to stop his best friend, while also thinking he somehow had it coming, has a blowup with Naturelle while attempting to reconcile Monty’s fall from grace and their respective roles in it, both reeling in their own complicity, yet when he obnoxiously starts to pin the blame on her she righteously puts him in his place and refuses to be associated with the invectives coming out of his mouth.  In this scenario, there is plenty of blame to go around, as the conflicted family and closest associates are all playing mind games and psychologically incriminating themselves for what were essentially Monty’s own decisions.  By dawn, Frank has to do the unthinkable, in a scene of escalating tension as Monty asks him to pulverize his face, as he refuses to enter prison “looking good,” knowing he would make an easy sexual target, an extension of his biggest fear.  It’s a repugnant scene, utterly raw and uncompromising, a challenge of manhood and a thorough reckoning with one’s conscience, yet emblematic of the underlying violence perpetuated throughout the criminal underworld, and an ugly picture of what awaits Monty in prison, where you can be scared of the future and haunted by the past at the same time.  It also mirrors the opening scene, as Monty’s beaten face recalls the grotesque body of a bloodied and battered dog at the beginning of the film that Monty suspects still has life within him (a metaphor for his own future), taking him in and nursing him back to health, becoming inseparable, always seen together on the benches overlooking the East River, creating an indelible image to revisit countless times while incarcerated.  But as his father arrives to drive him to prison, it leads to one of the most extraordinarily powerful sequences seen in years, with his father offering to turn West and take him as far away as possible, where he can build a new life, with a long monologue that becomes a poetic reverie offering a “What if?” scenario, creating a rapturous montage of utterly breathtaking cinema.  Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, reiterating the myth of freedom on the open road, this sequence offers a rarified glimpse of unfilled ambition.  But at what cost?  This film accentuates neither black nor white, but focuses on human beings, as if the collective sum of the consequences of their individual choices represents a vision of a newly developing morality.

“...This life came so close to never happening.”

In a brilliant and unparalleled ending, what a searing sequence of images, so exquisitely haunted by the chilling reminder of the unspoken, unseen ghosts of those missing lives, and the lives that will never be, filled with such an appreciation for life, that continually promises a world that might have been, before reminding us, instead, with a kind of effortless sock-in-the face, of how frail and vulnerable we really are, particularly in the devastating aftermath of 9/11, despite our swaggering bravado.  Loss figures prominently in this film, lamenting the loss of a loved one, a son, a friend, while also expounding on lost opportunities, saturated with regrets about the past, and nostalgia for a life that is now irrevocably over, making this is a farewell to freedom, from the world we once thought we knew, revealing instead such a powerful portrait of people struggling to overcome their own personal traumas, both internally and externally.  This is a shining testament to the resiliency of the human soul, as what we have, ultimately, is a transcendent work that provides a moving and enduring spirit of humanity.

Note

Also, a few differences between the book and the film.  In the book Monty drives a Corvette instead of the 1970 bright yellow Dodge Coronet Super Bee (1970 Dodge Coronet Super Bee Spike Lee 25Th Hour Film Mopar For Sale Auction Connecticut Mohegan Sun), he’s 27, it’s his last night before prison, there’s no pitbull jokes, the 4 DEA agents are all white and they don’t catch Monty and Naturelle in the bath tub.  Naturelle is a long distance runner, not a basketball player, which of course Spike couldn’t help changing.  But overall the movie is fairly faithful to the book.  The Victoria Secret joke is there, Naturelle has the Puerto Rican flag tattooed on her ankle, the teacher is in the 62nd percentile.  One interesting difference is the 3 options speech of the trader.  In the book option number 2 has the trader blatantly imitating suicide putting his fore-finger to his temple and squeezing his thumb down, while in the movie it was taking a bullet with his teeth.  Does suicide need to be softened for the masses?  The fuck you speech, which is on pages 111 – 113, goes on a bit longer and his fucks directed towards the Knicks and Michael Jordan were of course purged by ardent courtside Knicks fan Spike.  The student’s tattoo was on her wrist rather than her navel, though her teacher does ask her what her mother’s reaction was to it.  And the teacher stares at her white knees through the holes in her jeans rather than staring at her bare belly.  The crying after sex anecdote is told in a slightly different context.  Monty’s seduction of Naturelle is much more prolonged and involved, and the end monologue doesn’t include Naturelle, who he will never see again while he is hiding, instead he mates with the bar owner’s daughter.  In the original novel, Monty never doubts Naturelle’s loyalty to him, as a subplot of Monty mistrusting Naturelle was added for dramatic effect.