Delayed Reaction: 25th Hour

Premise: A man make the rounds 24 hours before beginning a 7-year prison sentence for dealing drugs.

 

I have a lot of movie obsessions like “quantifying what makes a favorite movie” or “rhetorically disproving the existence of guilty pleasure”. A newer one I’ve found is when tuning out during a movie is on me vs. when it’s on the movie. Not every movie deserves 100% attention. Some don’t even work best with 100% attention. I would’ve liked Jackass Forever a lot less in a theater. When a bit has gone on too long or is too severe, I need to be able to check out for a moment to not spoil the mood. I watch most movies from home, and I’m also often dicking around on my computer or phone at the same time. This is fine with me because good movies will draw me in. For bad movies, the option to turn my attention away is often why I can finish them. There are some casualties in this. The Power of the Dog didn’t make a huge impact for me the first time I saw it. I had a nagging feeling about it, decided to rewatch, and loved it. But mostly this system works for me.

 

This brings me back to my original point though. How can I determine where the fault lies when a movie does little for me? I didn’t dislike 25^th Hour. It’s not one of the Spike Lee modes that I find exhausting by the end. It’s clearly a Spike Lee joint but it doesn’t beat me over the head to remind me that he made it. I like the performances. I like when Ed Norton goes skuzzy without going full American History X. And it’s another Philip Seymour Hoffman role to check off the list. The movie never did suck me in though. Well, not until the end. That Brian Cox monologue at the end, outlining a fictional future for Norton’s character is pretty great. It’s the kind of high note that makes me think I was missing something the first 2 hours. A great ending can gaslight even the most vigilant movie fan. In this case, I think it does crystalize a lot of the film’s mission statement. If nothing else, it pushed it into that ever-growing category of “films I didn’t like enough to want to watch them again but if I ever did find myself rewatching it, I’m sure I’d like it more”.

So, I don’t know what to do with 25^th hour. I was hoping to like it much more. I’m glad I did watch it though. Perhaps I may even rewatch someday if I commit to the Spike Lee filmography more. But, at the end of the day, it was a movie that I kept finding myself tuning out. Is that my fault for not giving it enough attention or the movie’s fault for not drawing me in better? 

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend