25th Hour

The film opens with multiple shots of the Tribute in Light floodlights reaching into the sky from the site of the World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the 9/11 attacks.

A car pulls up at night on a New York City street. Two men get out, Monty Brogan and his friend Kostya, to look at an injured dog lying in the road. Monty intends to perform a mercy kill and shoot the dog but changes his mind after looking it in the eye; instead he takes the dog to a nearby clinic for treatment.

A few years later, Monty is about to begin serving a seven-year prison sentence for dealing drugs. He sits in a park with Doyle, the dog he rescued, after walking all over the city on his last day of freedom. He has passed American flags, fire station memorials, and tattered posters, reminders of those lost in the 9/11 attack. He plans to meet childhood friends later at a club with his girlfriend Naturelle. These are Frank, a boorish Wall Street trader, and Jacob, an introverted high school teacher with a crush on one of his students, named Mary.

Monty visits his father, James, a former firefighter and recovering alcoholic at his bar, to confirm their plans to drive to the prison the following morning. Monty gave drug money to his father to open the bar; James remorsefully sneaks a drink when Monty goes to the restroom. Facing himself in the mirror, Monty lashes out in his mind against everyone in New York before finally turning on himself, angry for becoming greedy and not giving up drug dealing before he was caught.

In a flashback, Monty remembers the night he was arrested: DEA agents raided Monty's apartment and quickly found the drugs he was selling for Uncle Nikolai, a Russian mobster. Kostya tries to persuade Monty it was Naturelle who betrayed him, since she knew where he hid his drugs and money. Monty refused to turn state's evidence against Nikolai, but is unsure about Nikolai’s actions. Monty remembers how he met Naturelle when he was hanging around his old school, and how happy they were. He asks Frank to find out if it was Naturelle who betrayed him.

Jacob sees Mary outside the club, and Monty invites her inside with them, although she is underage. Discussing what kind of a future Monty can have after prison, Frank says they can open a bar together. (He had told Jacob that he believes Monty deserves his sentence for dealing drugs.) Frank accuses Naturelle of living high on Monty's money despite knowing its origins, but she retorts that Frank also knew but said nothing. The argument culminates with Frank insulting Naturelle's Puerto Rican ethnicity; she slaps him and leaves. Jacob, meanwhile, finds the courage to kiss Mary, but both are shocked afterward and go their separate ways.

Monty and Kostya go to see Nikolai, who gives Monty advice on surviving in prison. Nikolai says that it was Kostya who betrayed Monty, and offers him a chance to kill Kostya in exchange for protecting his father's bar. Monty refuses, reminding Nikolai that the mobster was the one who told Monty to trust Kostya in the first place. Monty walks out, leaving Kostya to be killed by the Russian mobsters.

Monty returns to his apartment and apologizes to Naturelle for mistrusting her. He hands Doyle over to Jacob in the park. He admits that he is terrified of being raped in prison, whereupon he asks Frank to beat him, believing that he might have a chance at survival if he enters the prison ugly. Frank refuses, but Monty goads Frank into taking out his frustrations, and is left bruised and bloody, with a broken nose.

Naturelle tries to comfort him as Monty's father arrives to take him to Federal Correctional Institution, Otisville. On the drive to prison in upstate New York, Monty again sees a parade of faces from the streets of the city. As they drive up the Henry Hudson Parkway, James suggests they take the George Washington Bridge to go west, into hiding, and gives Monty a vision of a future where he avoids imprisonment, reunites with Naturelle, starts a family, and grows old. When the vision stops, they are past the bridge, still driving toward the prison.

Benioff completed the book The 25th Hour while studying at the University of California Irvine.^[3][4] After he received numerous rejections, it was published in 2001. Six months before that a preliminary trade copy was circulated; actor and producer Tobey Maguire read it and became interested in playing the lead role of Monty Brogan.

He acquired the option for a potential film project and asked Benioff to adapt it as a screenplay.^[5][4] However, after the script was written, Maguire had become too deeply involved with the Spider-Man film to take on another acting job. But he later served as a producer of 25th Hour. Spike Lee expressed an interest in directing the film.^[4][6]

Spike Lee was interested in the long monologue that Benioff called the "fuck monologue", in which Monty ranted against the five boroughs of New York; Benioff had considered leaving it out of the film, but Lee persuaded him to keep it in. Disney picked up the film rights and wanted the monologue cut, but Lee persisted in filming the scene.^[4]

The film was in the "planning stages" at the time of the September 11 attacks. Lee "decided not to ignore the tragedy but to integrate it into his story". The feelings of loss and uncertainty suffuse the film.^[7]

25th Hour received a 79% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 175 reviews, with an average rating of 7.22/10. The consensus calls the film "an intelligent and well-acted film despite the usual Spike Lee excesses."^[8] On Metacritic it has a score of 69/100 based on reviews from 40 critics, indicating “generally favorable reviews”.^[9]

Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B− on scale of A to F.^[10]

Five years after the September 11 attacks, Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: "Released 15 months after Sept. 11, 2001, Spike Lee's 25th Hour is the only great film dealing with the Sept. 11 tragedy... 25th Hour is as much an urban historical document as Rossellini's Open City, filmed in the immediate aftermath of the Nazi occupation of Rome".^[7]

Film critic Roger Ebert added the film to his "Great Movies" list on December 16, 2009.^[11] A. O. Scott,^[12] Richard Roeper^[13] and Roger Ebert all placed it on their respective lists for best films of the 2000 decade.^[14]

In a 2016 BBC poll of 177 critics from around the world, it was ranked as the 26th greatest film since 2000.^[15][16]

Monty's monologue, or rant, has made many 'top movie rant' lists.^[17][18]

Terence Blanchard composed the film's musical score. Other songs that appear in the film (and are not included in the original score) include:^[19]

1. Big Daddy Kane – "Warm It Up, Kane"
2. Craig Mack – "Flava in Ya Ear"
3. The Olympic Runners – "Put the Music Where Your Mouth Is"
4. Grandmaster Melle Mel – "White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)"
5. Liquid Liquid – "Cavern"
6. Cymande – "Bra"
7. Cymande – "Dove"
8. Cymande – "The Message"
9. Bruce Springsteen – "The Fuse"

The Better Call Saul season 1 episode "Bingo" makes both visual and verbal references to the film and its source novel, as well as to The Simpsons. Jimmy tells Kim to "Picture 25th Hour, starring Ned and Maude Flanders", when he phones Kim to tell her the Kettlemans, one of whom is facing jail time, have hired him to replace Kim as their attorney.^[20][21][22]

• List of cultural references to the September 11 attacks
• List of hood films

 

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• 25th Hour at IMDb