A repentant drug dealer is contemplating his past and fearing his future in the final 24 hours before entering prison for a seven-year stretch.

If this movie where a painting it would be a Jackson Pollack. This film needlessly goes everywhere; no topic of contemporary concern goes untrodded upon. Spike Lee has gone unchecked in this film and it detracts from the story in a huge way. There are simply too many topics compounded here. Some inferred, but many are given several minutes of precious screen time. The bombardment is so bad that you frequently feel like you are viewing a short subject film erroneously inserted into the feature. Actually, if you view them as short subjects, these vignettes are quite well done, but when laid end to end become cumbersome and rob the main story of its central focus.

If you can somehow overcome this you are left with a really good movie.

Within the central focus, we have a great assemblage of characters who are fleshed out nicely. We seem to know a lot about these characters mostly from what others say about them and that leads to some nice surprises along the way. The dialogue occasionally strays but is largely well written. There is a familiar Spike Lee look and feel to the film that really adds to the picture.

The aforementioned political assertions made in 25th Hour make this movie way too long; its runtime could easily spare fifteen minutes.

This movie definitely has an emotional effect. And it is twofold: the socio-political sentiment I did not want to see. And the interesting character driven crime story I did want to see.

It has, on occasion, been the responsibility of artists to show us what we don't want to see and I would never want that right taken away. But shoehorning a grab bag of hot topics into an otherwise quality film is not my idea responsible art.

Directed by Spike Lee.