69
Metascore
40 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleSan Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleThe result is a film of sadness and power, the first great 21st century movie about a 21st century subject.
- 100Chicago TribuneMichael WilmingtonChicago TribuneMichael Wilmington25th Hour struck me as one of the best movies of 2002, but it's also a film that will strike some of its audience as ethically dubious or threatening.
- 90Chicago ReaderJonathan RosenbaumChicago ReaderJonathan RosenbaumThe film persuades us to think long and hard about what prison means, and Lee has shaped it like a poem that builds into an epic lament, especially in a beautiful and tragic closing that risks absurdity to achieve the sublime.
- 78Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesAustin ChronicleKimberley JonesIsn't Lee's most personal piece, but it may very well be his most mature.
- 75Miami HeraldRene RodriguezMiami HeraldRene RodriguezLee delivers a beautiful evocation of the American Dream in its simplest, purest form.
- 75Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaPhiladelphia InquirerSteven ReaIt could have been more taut, could have been harder, but 25th Hour still resonates with power and poetry.
- 67Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam ArnoldSeattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam ArnoldLee doesn't seem to have the slightest sympathy for his hero, no particular point is made, and the whole exercise seems cold and empty.
- 67Portland OregonianShawn LevyPortland OregonianShawn LevyAn engaging if not riveting film based on David Benioff's adaptation of his own novel. It's not nearly Lee's best picture, and it's guilty of a few wrong turns that only a confident filmmaker could make, but it's assured and, perhaps more importantly, reassuring.
- 50SlateDavid EdelsteinSlateDavid EdelsteinAt 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.
- 30Los Angeles TimesManohla DargisLos Angeles TimesManohla DargisThere are two films at war in director Spike Lee's newest feature 25th Hour, one uninteresting, the other an epic of near-tragic miscalculation.