25TH HOUR, (2003)

Film director Spike Lee has always made changeling, interesting, if, in some cases, very flawed films, and 25th Hour is no exception.

But, as a director- and ambitious as he is- even Spike Lee's worst films are better than a lot of other directors who have little to say for themselves.

25th Hour is another of Lee's stories about New York, the place he loves and hates.

Summer of Sam explored New York trying to avoid a serial killer. Do The Right Thing-his greatest achievement- explored racism in one long, heated 24-hour period.

25th Hour takes a similar approach, in that it explores the moral choices of a group of friends over 24 hours.

The title refers to the fact that Monty Brogan (Edward Norton), a New York City drug dealer is about to be sent up the river for seven years, after being convicted of possessing and selling cocaine.

He's determined to spend his final day of freedom with loved ones, including his girlfriend Naturelle (Rosario Dawson).

As he starts on his reflective, redemptive quest for answers, Brogan tries to find out who told the police about his possessing large amounts of drugs and counterfeit money.

He suspects his girlfriend, but his father (Brian Cox) seems to trust Naturelle and thinks she wouldn't want to see her boyfriend behind bars under any circumstances.

Monty also cherishes his best friends- neurotic, socially awkward private school teacher Jacob (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and arrogant, brash, but emotionally hollow Wall Street broker Francis (Barry Pepper).

They provide the balance between Brogan's dishonest lifestyle and his need to reconcile with his conscience and prepare for prison.

But his friends have their own problems. Jacob fancies a 17-year-old student (Anna Paquin) and has to wrestle with the moral choices of underage sex, teacher-student ethics and his own lack of assertiveness.

Meanwhile, Francis is trying to block out dealing with real life and his attitude to his friends, including Brogan and his girlfriend, is dangerously one-dimensional and dismissive.

Francis's apartment overlooks the burned-out crater left by the September 11 attack. His nonchalance towards human suffering causes him to remark: "Hey, if Osama Bin Laden bombed again, right outside my door, I still wouldn't move." His amoral stance is quite telling, it's also quite sad.

As usual, Lee makes New York City large than life, as it to suggest the idea that a person is defined more by their environment than they would probably care to admit.

The opening credits, scored by the wonderful Terence Blanchard, express New York City's more sombre mood Since September 2001, complete with a montage of the city's skyscrapers silhouetted in a blue light. It's a beautiful, mournful image.

Expanding on what was quite a brief source novel, Scriptwriter David Benioff gives the characters a rare depth and the film manages to sympathise with even the most corrupt character.

Benioff , correctly, realises that even drug dealers, as characters, are not black and white in how they see things in life. They, too, have contradictory impulses.

Norton's performance elicits sympathy because he's not playing up to the normal stereotypes and he's actually scared of prison and regretful of his stupidity.

In homage to Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, Lee manages to up the ante in terms of using music to explain a sequence or add a frisson of energy to it.

In a lengthy sequence, which takes place in a nightclub, Lee gathers his main characters as they talk, discuss and become more truthful, thanks, in no small part, to drink and funky music.

But the music, from '80s rapper Big Daddy Kane to Wilesden-based '70s funk group Cymande, takes on a resonance all its own, as the characters start to accept themselves, or express latent desires or spew home truths.

Lee uses turntable scratching in addition to traditional tracking shots and jarring close-ups, to conjure up the feel and confusion of the nightclub space.

Sometime the flashbacks in the story overlap confusingly and there is a fogginess to the approach, but, just like life, if you imagine that you'll come away from the film with just one opinion, then Lee hasn't done his job properly.

However, as in Do The Right Thing, Lee posits certain ideas about humanity that aren't clearly defined and leaves you to make a conclusion or set of conclusions based on your own life experiences.

Strangely, though, some of the characters are mere ciphers and somewhat badly defined, especially those in the Russian Mafia.

25th Hour is a strong, emotionally moving drama that packs in ambitious ideas and tangible, realistic situations that explore the human condition with verve, skill and sincerity.