25th Hour Critic Reviews

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

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

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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

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

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review