25th Hour

By RICHARD CORLISS

Halfway through his long day's journey into night, and day again, Monty Brogan (Edward Norton) launches into a rant against New York: "F___ you and this city and everyone in it!" He spreads his venom ecumenically--to the Pakistani cab drivers and the black schoolyard studs and the Soprano wannabes in Bensonhurst, and to the Irish-American boyos of whom Monty is one. It's a swell swill of gutter poetry--written by novelist-screenwriter David Benioff and vigorously illustrated in a tabloid-surrealist style by director Spike Lee--that touches on everything New Yorkers, and Americans, love to hate about the big city.

Aside from that Grucci Brothers skyrocket of invective, 25th Hour is pretty lethargic stuff. Monty, a convicted drug dealer on his last day before he is to report to prison, does more moping than moving. The virtue of this brutal downer is on the edges, in the evocation of New York after 9/11: depressed, cratered, postapocalyptic. The film suggests that Gothamites have been frozen in their tracks, like emotional zombies waiting to see if the next attack can make them feel deader than they already do. --R.C.