Last night out

Spike Lee's desire to explore the nuances of black life is admirable, though the scope of his ambition has often proved to be his artistic undoing. Each film not only tells a racially charged story that (he hopes) teaches a moral lesson, but insists on driving home the points again and again in superfluous scenes that drag on and on (one of the reasons his films tend to run well over two hours). This is an especially distressing problem in Bamboozled, his 2000 film about a black television producer who brazenly puts on a minstrel show. The valid points about hypocrisy and self-image are made early on, but then Lee continue to hash out the major themes, slowing the film down to a crawl.

I'm not certain why Lee feels the need to add these cinematic public service announcements, unless he believes that younger members of his audience should be told the specifics about the struggle for racial equality that older members already know. He's probably right about the generation gap, but it is the job of an accomplished filmmaker either to find a more effective way to address this problem or to trust his audiences a bit.

Given this approach, it's very striking that 25th Hour has no major black characters. The tale (based on the 2001 novel by David Benioff, who also wrote the script) is about a convicted drug dealer's last night on the town, before he begins serving seven years in prison. The lead role could have been cast with a black man. Lee avoided that move, probably figuring that it would feed one of the stereotypes (black men deal drugs) that he has worked so hard to play down.