The 25th Hour

The 25th hour is a perfect movie.

I mean that in every sense of the word. In that films ought to be escapist, emotionally resonant and periodically relevant, it hits every mark.

Aesthetically it’s unbelievable, especially when you consider that like many films and pieces of art, particularly for the storyteller for this past century, the setting and location is also a major character. However, before I let myself get gleefully lost in the piece itself, the how and the why of the film require due diligence.

It’s been 16 plus years, and many of the emerging and vociferous talent now was too young to know or understand. This was pre Dubai and Singapore as Mecca’s for the brave new world. New York was still undoubtedly the center of the known world when the planes hit on 9/11. This movie was filmed there mere months after that. I was 15 when the towers fell and 18 when I first visited New York and stuck my head through the fence cordoning off the WTC. Walking through the city at that age, New York still felt wounded and raw.

America felt that way.

Like the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs, like the attack on Pearl Harbor, the events of September 11th 2001 were world changing. The demarcation of life before that day and after it, has defined everything. Literally. The way ‘Before Christ’ and ‘Anno Domini’ has marked the delineation of human history, so has the terrorist attacks of 9/11. In a lot of ways the world didn’t learn or heal or recover from it. The relationship between the rest of the world and the some 1.8 billion Muslims with whom we share the planet, has remained tense. War and strife continues to proliferate in the Middle East and while here in America defense conditions have remained at level 5 it feels like level 1 is always a singular event away.

Because it is.

So now we have the weight of the times. The inescapable sense of consequence. Remarkably, the source material for the movie had nothing to do with the event. Several months earlier, one David Benioff , whose name may seem familiar as it was his work along with D.B Weiss that brought life to the relatively unknown work of one George R.R Martin, (Game of Thrones anyone? ) wrote the novel The 25th Hour from which the film would be adapted. Before the novel was published, a manuscript of it caught the attention of one Tobey Maguire, who, a lot of people don’t realize, ushered in the age of the Marvel-big-budget-$100-million-dollar-opening-weekend insanity.

Yes.

Wild as it may seem, Columbia Pictures with Maguire starring, did a wide release of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, another New York based film, in May of 2002. The film opened on that unremarkable weekend ( big budget films prior often relied on a Memorial Day weekend or Fourth of July weekend to haul big numbers. Spider-Man was released the weekend of May 3rd) to the tune of $117 million. To date that movies haul is near $822 million. For perspective my home country, The Commonwealth of Dominica has a GDP of $524 million.

And that is our best recorded year. But what is the significance of Tobey Maguire’s ties to The 25th Hour? While he originally bought the rights to the novel with the intention to star in it, he decided instead to star in Spider-Man, a major risk that paid off handsomely. Edward Norton who stars in the film as the protagonist Montgomery Brogan, also used his earnings from 2002’s Red Dragon to help finance the film.

The film was in pre-production at the time of 9/11 but with New York’s honored son Spike Lee directing, remains the singular best film about 9/11. And this is despite the fact that the source material was written before 9/11 and was not at all about 9/11. The film was made independently but with Maguire taking the comic book movie franchise to places that 20th Century Fox’s X-Men hadn’t, and Norton’s cash off the third installment in the Hannibal Lecter series, 25th Hour caught the attention of none other than Disney, a juggernaut still at that time but a behemoth ready to move away from the absolutely G-rated, kid friendly, unoffending material, showing that talent above all else mattered.

Disney, in a freshly wounded, still reeling Post 9/11 America, distributed a film with a five minute long ‘Fuck you’ monologue that leaves no person on the planet unscathed.

You have to watch the movie to know of what it is I speak. This was before they acquired Lucas-film and Marvel. If not for Disney’s distribution this film may have never seen the light of day, far less make limited release in the fall of 2002 before wider release in January of 2003. The small, late, 2002 release made it eligible for awards season fan fare which was crucial for Benioff and the entire cast.

If not for the notoriety of 25th Hour, Game of Thrones might have never been.

If Maguire hadn’t been involved Disney might not have thrown its full might behind the Marvel catalogue.

The Golden age of the comic book movie as we now know it might have never been. The proper revival of the Star Wars Universe after the abysmal three film prequels that gave us Jar-Jar Binks ( a stain that just will not wash out), might have never been.

Another perfect film, Rogue One might have never been.

I dare say that The 25th Hour not only gave new talent ( Benioff) a chance but it showed that established talent could make a tried and true genre feel new and original again. Almost all of the cast has since been involved in the Marvel Extended Universe. Rosario Dawson stars in Netflix Daredevil and Luke Cage, the only ‘name’ actor tied to those series whose involvement no doubt helped get the projects made. Anna Paquin had already starred in X-Men as did Brian Cox in its sequel. Norton would star as Bruce Banner in the only Incredible Hulk Film that’s tied to the current Avenger series ( after Ang Lee’s Hulk, while dreamy to look at, and the pitch perfect casting of Jennifer Connelly as Betty Ross and Sam Elliot as General Thunderbolt Ross, all the levity was sucked out of ‘comic’ side of the ‘comic book’ Bruce Banners story. This is man who turns large and green when angry for Christ’s sake. There’s not a single laugh or smile to be found in that particular film. In fact I had nightmares of Nick Nolte’s Brian Banner for weeks after seeing that movie).

Mark Ruffalo took over the role for The Avengers by Joss Whedon but check out Ed Norton’s Hulk which saw an end credits scene with Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark approaching General Thunderbolt Ross in a bar to proposition him with the Avenger initiative, a role and a scene nicely tied up with Ross now Defense Secretary in Captain America : Civil War.

All of the aforementioned is to say that, like everything else, there was filmmaking pre 9/11 and post 9/11. Spider-Man’ s success was simultaneously a much needed light hearted romp and cacophonous ‘Fuck you’ to those who might seek to steal our joy. The film has aged well considering that the best comic book movie before it is a three way tie between Bryan Singers X-men released in 2000, 1998’s Blade and Tim Burton’s Batman Returns released in 1992.

The 25th Hour was and is still the best film about 9/11 though we had United 93, World Trade Center and Zero Dark Thirty and a slew of others. The films I mention are all pretty heavy handed, the stories doing less show or tell and more like ‘wring-the-tears-out-of-you’ storytelling. Other films like Remember me and Reign Over me use 9/11 as plot devices. That’s not the case with The 25th Hour.

The opening credits are all deliberate, uncomfortable, ominous shots of the Tribute lights, the two heaven piercing high beams that replaced the Twin Towers. The title alone gives the whole thing away; it’s too late. Times up. The cold light of day will make clear the cost of your actions. Make no mistake about it. Everything costs something. Prior to the credits is a cold open of Edwards’ Monty driving through the city on the way to a meeting when he stops and saves a miserable, violent mongrel who bites his neck during the course of his rescue.

” look at him, he’s a good dog, I can see it in his eyes, he’s a tough little bastard. He wasn’t laying down for nobody” Monty declares, not two minutes after considering shooting the dog to put him out of his misery, while trying to convince his Russian colleague to help him save him. The dog is named Doyle, after a hilarious debate on the purveyor of ‘Murphy’s Law’.

This movie doesn’t need a first act.

In the first 5 minutes Spike Lees deft and expert directing tells you where you are, who the players are and in case you didn’t know, our dog was still in the fight.

New York lays down for no one.

The following 2 hours give broad exposition. Post opening credits, as dawn breaks over Riverside Park on Manhattans upper West Side, Monty’s final day as a free man begins with reckoning. Facing the consequences of all the actions that led him here. A former customer, in bad shape approaches him. We get the truth flat out. He’s been caught. He’s done. It’s over. Over the course of the film, all taking place over the course of 24 hrs, with flashbacks here and there filling in the gaps where a single day of reconciliation falter, the plot becomes clear. There’s no Hail Mary. There’s no plot twist or third act surprise. This is his new reality. If I seem deliberately vague it’s because I don’t want to spoil the film for those who may read this but haven’t seen it. We see Monty past and present with his friends, girlfriend, his father and his colleagues on his last day in New York.

Spike Lee employs a few expert tricks here. Watch for when characters greet each other. Those moments are shown in duplicate, from two angles. Seriously. Blink and you’ll miss it. It’s subtle. Take what you will from it. The joy of a greeting. A hug. A kiss. A handshake. Last looks. Also 9/11 is only explicitly mentioned twice and for all our braggadocio-bad-assery, any true New Yorker is not spouting off at the mouth about 9/11 in every day life. It may come up in discussion but the nationwide diatribe of what 9/11 was never extended to New Yorkers. We knew what it was. We lived it. We moved on. There was never a need to talk it to the death the way everyone else did. In this film however, when it is mentioned, it’s as a fuck you to those who would see New York hurt. it’s mentioned explicitly in Monty’s infamous ‘ Fuck you’ bathroom monologue and then by his best friend Francis Xavier Slaughtery played pitch perfect by Barry Pepper, a greasy, Bay-Ridge-wise-ass fuck boy come Wall Street asshole. A terrible but painfully accurate stereotype for the times. His apartment overlooks Ground Zero.

” you gonna move?” Jacob Elinsky, Monty’s other best friend, played to self inflicted, sullen, pathetic, rich-people-self-flagellation stupidity perfection by the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman, asks.

” Fuck that, man” Slaughtery huffs, ” as much good money as I pay for this place? Hello no. I’ll tell you what, Bin Laden can drop another one right next door, I ain’t moving”

I defy anyone to think of a more New York response to 9/11.

It’s worth noting also that this was the first film to show explicit 9/11 imagery filmed for the movie. That scene of Ground Zero cleanup going on in the background while Barry Pepper and Philip Seymour Hoffman exchange lines is real not staged. And it’s so subtle and jarring at the same time.

We will never forget because we can’t. It was everywhere. That was a very real scar carved out of the American consciousness.

As the story of how Monty came to be in this particular predicament unfolds, his relationships unravel and convalesce. Things run their natural course, a single question that didn’t even needed to be answered is answered and that’s as much as we get in the way of a plot twist so to speak. The players are all excellent. Brian Cox plays Monty’s weathered alcoholic-who-owns-a-Bar single father. A bit naive to how things work now as opposed to the New York he’s always known. Rosario Dawson’s Naturelle Rivera isn’t given much but she’s not a weepy waif. She shows Monty not an ounce of pity. She loves him. She’s sorry. But everyone knew what he was and this is consequence of that.

“What do you want Monty?” She asks, exasperated but empathetic.

“ I want to be like that girl from X-Men…. the one that can walk through walls” Monty replies. As telling a moment in the film as any.

Anna Paquin as a walking siren, neophyte seductress is the only character free of the dour mood beholden to everyone else. She has no idea what’s going on and is refreshingly light hearted because of it.

The cinematography is perfect for the elevation and subduing of mood as is the music. The blown out, over exposed, blue-tinted, hyper-colorized tones tell us as much as the writing or the music. All of it seamless and perfect.

The overall tone of the film is not hopeful and promising and uplifting and it should leave you with two things.

We survived this. There were consequences and mistakes made and the world changed, but New York, America, our spirits survived. Our reputation for resilience is not empty.

Secondly while the evil that attacked on that day, killing thousands of innocent people and first responders is a horror that can only be realized because it actually happened, America was not without fault here. While we did nothing to deserve that madness and pain and suffering, Ignoring humanitarian crises in that region, backing dictators when it suited us, proliferating war when it was profitable, and training, using and then discarding the monster who, like monsters often do, would come home to roost… It’s a generally accepted belief in New York that 9/11 didn’t have to happen. Had we been more diligent, had we exercised more comprehensive diplomacy….. we trained Bin Laden in warfare for God’s sake. How did we drop the ball in so monumental a manner? We learned from those mistakes, yes, But try telling that to the wives of the first responders who died at ground zero. Try telling that to the children who will never meet their fathers. We hold two things as being true: that we love, cherish and will defend America to the death. And because we love her so, we must self-correct when we go wrong.

The ending will gut you. In a seven minute long monologue Monty’s father tells it as it could be, as it should have been and if you’ve ever wanted for anything in your life to be different or imagined a could’ve, would’ve, should’ve scenario, the films final words will haunt you

“it all came so close to never happening.”

“This life came so close to never happening”