The movie is more scattershot, spending too much time on pointless tangents like Russian gangsters and teenage hos. The editing is often distractingly jumpy and fragmented, and although the conceit of the film is that Monty’s hours are counting down, you never get a sense of time, or rather, of time running out. Norton never really projects any mounting desperation; speeches that would seem to fit better toward the end of his last day of freedom instead come at the beginning, and his final hour is curiously devoid of urgency. The movie's biggest problem, though, is its fixation with the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks. Lee had said that, as one of the first productions to film in New York after Sept. 11th, the movie wouldn’t ignore the attacks, but it wouldn’t dwell on them. Well, how is it not dwelling on the attacks to have an entire scene, meant to be character exposition, filmed with the vast pit of Ground Zero in the background (and kicked off by an inane exchange about how the EPA says the air is safe, but no it’s not, they’re lying, etc.)? On a filmmaking level, it’s horribly distracting from the dialogue; on a personal level, I just don’t want to see it. It’s not like this is some forgotten tragedy that Lee wants us to remember – some of us take a lot of trouble to avoid thinking about it.
I’ll get off this track in a moment, but Sept. 11th also comes up in Monty’s response to “Fuck you” graffiti he spots on a mirror. An article in Slate goes into this more thoroughly, but basically, his rant is supposed to be a “fuck you, too” to the tribes of New York that enrage him but also characterize the city for him. (You know, almost exactly like the invective roundelay in Lee’s Do the Right Thing.) Setting aside the contrived feeling of the rant and the way it dramatically changes the tone (it stops the film dead, and not in a good way), it’s inconsistent and nonsensical. Starting off at a pitch so fierce that he can’t work it up any higher, Norton rages about the Korean corner-store owners, the squeegee guys, the obnoxious Wall Streeters, etc. Suddenly he’s on about Osama bin Laden and Enron (and because he started with peak fury, he’s cursing terrorists with the same venom he uses for the annual Puerto Rican Day parade) – clearly not things he is going to miss despite himself, or that make up the city’s character, or that should equated at any level with black guys who never pass the ball in pick-up basketball games or face-lifted society matrons. As he leaves town heading toward prison, Monty gazes wistfully at the ethnic and societal groups he complained about. Surely he doesn’t feel that way about Osama bin Laden. Besides, it feels too awkwardly, narrowly topical – in five years, who the fuck will know what he’s talking about with Enron and Tyco?
Okay, I’m off that subject, except to reiterate that the outburst feels out of place and knocks the pacing and tone of the movie off the tracks – most of the movie is quiet dialogue, and this is a ferocious monologue. Several of these jarring moments happen throughout the film, scenes that, with judicious editing and artistic moderation, could have seemed organic but instead are conspicuous in their inelegance. The ending could have been a lovely, melancholy conclusion, but it goes on too long, becomes mawkish, and ruins the bittersweet flavor.
The first line in my notes is “AP – again w/the teen ho?!” This is my shorthand for Anna Paquin playing yet another skanky high-school ho. At this point, I can’t think of any reason to put her in a movie ever again. I thought she was a whiny brat in The Piano, and she’s been a foul addition to every movie since then. By contrast, Rosario Dawson turns the scantly sketched Naturelle into a full human being – she’s just terrific. As Monty’s friends, Barry Pepper and Philip Seymour Hoffman outshine Norton, who’s surprisingly unmemorable. Pepper especially is great at showing the layers beneath Frank’s execrable Gordon-Gekko-wannabe exterior, although he still has a ways to go to apologize artistically for starring in Battlefield Earth (yeah, I actually watched the damn thing). The best scenes are between the two of them; they're riveting to watch together, even when Lee undercuts their most revelatory scene with the aforementioned backdrop of Ground Zero. (Hoffman’s crush on the little ho is icky and trite, but that’s not his fault.) Brian Cox gets too little time as Montgomery’s father, but he does a good job.
I had been really looking forward to seeing 25th Hour,
particularly because of Norton and Lee, but they ended up being the
biggest
disappointments in this underwhelming movie.
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