Damox.com

In the opening scene Monty Brogan (Ed Norton) pulls his 1970 Dodge Super Bee up to an injured dog. What a great way to start a movie! I love classic muscle cars, and this scene alone is worth a point in my overall rating. Brogan is about to go to jail and this is his last day of freedom for a long time. He begins questioning who his true friends are, and who sold him out.

Ed Norton is just fantastic in this movie. I'd say he's one of the top 5 actors in Hollywood, and he has a habit of picking good scripts too. The scene where he goes on a rant about everything he hates about New York City is already a classic, and this came in a movie set in post-911 NYC, so a rant like that took a little courage from both Norton and director Spike Lee. One thing I really liked about this movie was that it gets the audience rooting for a drug dealer, but he doesn't come through rich and glamorous (and free) in the end.

I think this may have been one of the first studio productions set in New York after September 11, aside from those made-for-dvd documentaries that were just trying to milk the terrorism cash cow. This was also one of the first movies to deal with New York's Rockefeller laws. These laws for drug dealers have sent first-time offenders to prison for hard time. I think Spike Lee's goal in making this film was to expose these draconian laws show people that even drug dealers have a human side. I wish Spike Lee could just make a movie without the social commentary. It may be necessary for some films, but most of the time it just handicaps what he can do. I'm also getting a little sick of Spike trying to prove to everyone how "New York" he is. In the end this was still a great movie that few people have seen.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10