The 25th Hour Details

Fine ensemble acting and the frisson of this being the first film to use post-11 September Manhattan as a bleak character mirror make this edgy version of David Benioff's novel one of director Spike Lee's better dramas. Due to begin a seven-year prison sentence, drug dealer Edward Norton spends his last day of freedom hanging out with his friends, his father and girlfriend, taking stock of his life and weighing up his choices: should he give in gracefully, flee or commit suicide? Lee's pace may be a little too leisurely at times, but the sense of human aimlessness and desolation is still powerfully conveyed and leaves a lasting impression. The secondary characters (such as Philip Seymour Hoffman's high-school teacher) often eclipse Norton's predicament in curiosity value, but his anguished, five-minute rant against the world sears the mind, as does the viciously disturbing finale.

A sometimes turgid, very occasionally striking, drama of a man regretting his choices in life, and what awaits him in prison; setting it in the aftermath of 9/11 and the destruction of the World Trade Center only diminishes the movie's impact.