25th Hour

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The result is a film of sadness and power, the first great 21st century movie about a 21st century subject.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

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.

Film Threat G. Allen Johnson

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."

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

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.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

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.

The New Yorker David Denby

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]

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

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.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

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.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

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.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

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.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The film is unusual for not having a plot or a payoff.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

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.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Lee has created that rarity in filmmaking: a movie we need, right now.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

Isn't Lee's most personal piece, but it may very well be his most mature.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Lee delivers a beautiful evocation of the American Dream in its simplest, purest form.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Moves slowly -- it's an unhurried, talky affair that consists primarily of members of the small group of characters interacting.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

It could have been more taut, could have been harder, but 25th Hour still resonates with power and poetry.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

In a multiplex filled with empty New Year vessels (take that, Kangaroo Jack), this holdover grabs you hard.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Too bad there's also a final 15 minutes that surely ranks among the worst endings an otherwise good movie has ever received.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

If 25th Hour does not quite work as a plausible and coherent story, it produces a wrenching, dazzling succession of moods.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Edward Norton makes an art of self-containment. No contemporary actor gives less away to more effect, and he's at his closely held best in 25th Hour, a drama of redemption, directed by Spike Lee, that seldom rises to the level of his performance.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Lee doesn't seem to have the slightest sympathy for his hero, no particular point is made, and the whole exercise seems cold and empty.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

An engaging if not riveting film based on David Benioff's adaptation of his own novel. It's not nearly Lee's best picture, and it's guilty of a few wrong turns that only a confident filmmaker could make, but it's assured and, perhaps more importantly, reassuring.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Norton is brilliant in Lee's so-so 'Hour.'

TV Guide Angel Cohn

While Edward Norton convincingly portrays both the good and bad side of his conflicted man, a great deal of the insight into his character comes from the strong supporting cast.

Salon.com Jeff Stark

Of course Spike Lee has the right to transcend movies about race. He also has the talent to do better than this plodding moral fable.

Variety David Rooney

Lapses into melodramatic self-importance and gratuitous stylistic flourishes that take the audience out of the action -- are outweighed by the steadily amplified emotional power of this ultimately moving drama.

USA Today Scott Bowles

Hour not only acknowledges the attacks -- they're a running theme. Lee opens his movie with a shot of the beaming blue spotlights that mark where the twin towers once stood.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

It's the usual undisciplined, overextended Spike symphony: more fun than it is any good.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

To say Spike Lee is repeating himself is itself repetitious -- he is getting B-O-R-I-N-G!

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

This is romanticism of a rather low order.

Slate David Edelstein

At its best, 25th Hour is a melancholy tone poem -- But the movie is also muddled by its own ambitions. There is simply no connection between the themes of Benioff's screenplay and 9/11, and every time Lee over-inflates the story, he loses its real pulse.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Often feels like a mediocre time-waster, and yet it sticks in the mind.

Time Richard Corliss

Pretty lethargic stuff. Monty, a convicted drug dealer on his last day before he is to report to prison, does more moping than moving.

LA Weekly Ernest Hardy

Just about the only good thing you can say about Spike Lee's pointless, didactic The 25th Hour is that it's filled with strong performances, albeit of stock characters.

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

There are two films at war in director Spike Lee's newest feature 25th Hour, one uninteresting, the other an epic of near-tragic miscalculation.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Spike Lee's films have been provocative, blunt, thoughtful, misguided, daring, sentimental, funny, honest and silly. But 25th Hour earns the director two new adjectives: irrelevant and tedious.