25th Hour
Metascore
67 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 37 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 24 out of 37
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 37
  3. Negative: 3 out of 37
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  1. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    100
    25th Hour struck me as one of the best movies of 2002, but it's also a film that will strike some of its audience as ethically dubious or threatening.
  2. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    100
    The movie is flawed by implausible psychology and moments of weak acting. But it's more than redeemed by Lee's passionate ideas about America today.
  3. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    100
    The result is a film of sadness and power, the first great 21st century movie about a 21st century subject.
  4. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: G. Allen Johnson
    100
    One of Spike Lee's greatest films -- seamlessly merging personal drama against a canvas of larger social significance on a level worthy of "Do the Right Thing."
  5. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Keith Phipps
    90
    The film at its simplest serves as a cautionary tale, but it also functions as a meditation on how little it takes to redirect a life by choice or by chance.
  6. Dallas Observer
    Reviewed by: Robert Wilonsky
    90
    The movie resonates precisely because it serves as documentary only pretending to be fiction: It's set in a real place recovering from real pain, which Lee makes tangible.
  7. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: David Denby
    90
    It captures the city's bitter, wire-taut mood after September 11th, and I hope that Disney -- finds some way to bring this acrid and brilliant little picture to the large audience it deserves. [13 January 2003, p. 90]
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  8. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Rosenbaum
    90
    The film persuades us to think long and hard about what prison means, and Lee has shaped it like a poem that builds into an epic lament, especially in a beautiful and tragic closing that risks absurdity to achieve the sublime.
  9. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    88
    The film is unusual for not having a plot or a payoff.
  10. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Lou Lumenick
    88
    Norton, returning to cracking form, doesn't try to make the selfish and smug Monty sympathetic -- but he lights up the screen, especially in two fantasy sequences.
  11. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    88
    It's deeply stylized, but there's an accompanying patience and gravity that are hard to shake. They're the architecture of a lingering, unsentimental sadness.
  12. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    83
    Lee, as he did in ''Malcolm X'' and ''Clockers,'' makes his hero's dread palpable, and though 25th Hour lacks the glittering brilliance of those films, I was held by the toughness and pity of Lee's gaze.

User Reviews

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User Score
8.1 out of 10

Universal acclaim- based on 97 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 35 out of 43
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 43
  3. Negative: 7 out of 43
  1. AxeFish
    8
    This certainly isn't a movie that I would want to watch together with friends. Instead of trying to grab your attention with visual-heavy scenes, this movie mainly consists of conversations. It's about a realistic scenario and how the people affected by it are dealing with it. And I really like the movie for that. It's different from what I usually watch.
    The conversations are also very realistic. There are some scenes that were kind of unnecessary but still blew me away by how these characters talked to each other. A lot of times I thought to my self: "Yea, I could see my self taking part of that conversation." Although the drug mobster is kind of overblown.
    I can see why people find this movie boring. It's not for everyone. If you're the type of guy that can sit down for 2 hours and listen to people talk to each other about what they think will happen to them and what they're afraid of instead of them taking part in action scenes, then give this movie a shot. I certainly really enjoyed it.    … Full Review »
  2. JoshC
    10
    In the 25th hour, Mr. Lee exercises his prodigious visual talents with unusual restraint, and keeps some of his more confrontational urges in check. Because the movie is so measured, so melodic, its bursts of wild invention, which might otherwise be irritating, are electrifying. The ending, narrated by Mr. Cox, is as bittersweet and sincere an evocation of the American dream as I have seen on film in quite some time, acknowledging both the futility of the collective national fantasy and its consoling, resilient power. Almost as touching is a moment when Monty, staring into a men's room mirror, launches into a profane tirade against his fellow New Yorkers (and everyone else). His rage is impressively ecumenical, encompassing blacks, brutal police officers, gays, Osama bin Laden, the rich, the poor and every other ethnic or social type you can think of: all of them put down with ruthless, scabrous precision. The rant recalls a famous sequence in ''Do the Right Thing'' and also Eminem's more recent invocation, in ''White America,'' of ''so much anger aimed/in no particular direction just sprays and sprays.'' But like Eminem's rhymes, Monty's outburst, and the montage that accompanies it, contain tenderness as well as hate. Mr. Lee, an irreplaceable New York filmmaker, understands better than most that the true New Yorker's deep, exasperated and unquenchable love for his city is sometimes best expressed in the language of rage.… Full Review »
  3. TheTick
    2
    Ed Norton was completely believable. However, the script was so incredibly sad. I don't want to watch a film about utter hopelessness. Fine for people who love tragedies. If you want to walk away not feeling suicidal, don't bother.… Full Review »
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