Movie Reviews continued: 25th Hour

This was by far, the most introspectively done masterpiece of the year; a subtle elegiac ode to a post-9/11 New York through the vehicle of a simpleton story. It requires no plot (it doesn't have one), no melodramatic sentiment, and no victim tears. Spike Lee delivers in one of his only non-African-American set films, his tribute and contribution to the already-piling-up art works dedicated to the memory of New York. 25th Hour is Spike Lee's cinematic version of John Adams' "On The Transmigration of Souls".

Literal parellels to 9/11 are present, but not omni-present, and more importantly, they are important, but not omni-potent - and that's where Spike Lee makes his bridge from cliche-film to contemporary-America's new-age "Cannery Row." The 9/11 tributes function as a dedicatee basis, the images of its devastation a pervading constant through the film, and ultimately always an appropriate aura for the meat-message of the movie: re-evaluation.

I was especially hit by Edward Norton's "fuck you" schizo-dialogue to the diversity of New York, which is always a Spike Lee staple, and always powerful. This is a must-see.