INTERMISSION

How 25th Hour reflects his own life

A WRITER TAKES PAUSE TO CONSIDER....

MATT GLASBY @MATTGLASBY

Gimme the word and I’ll take a left turn,’ says James Brogan (Brian Cox) to his wayward son Monty (Edward Norton) as he drives him to prison at the end of 25th Hour (2002). ‘If that’s what you want, I’ll do it.’

Every time I watch Spike Lee’s rueful, life-in-a-day drama, adapted by David Benioff from his debut novel, this scene destroys me. Partly because it’s setting up a gut-punch twist, whereby Monty’s escape is sketched out then snatched away. But mainly because James Brogan reminds me of my own lovely dad.

Set in a New York haunted by 9/11, the film introduces Monty – played with just the right amount of charm and cockiness by Norton – as he prepares to serve seven years for dealing drugs. His last day of freedom is also a day of reckoning, as he tries to square things with his girlfriend Naturelle (Rosario Dawson), childhood friends Jacob (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Frank (Barry Pepper) and his father, all flawed people trying to stay afloat in the city churn.

Each meeting is tinged with sadness because they know Monty’s never coming back. That he had the world at his feet, and he blew it. ‘Look what a little punk I was,’ he says, staring at an old school photo – but it’s too little self-knowledge, too late.

When I first saw the film, I felt a kinship with Monty, despite our – admittedly sizeable – differences. I’d never been to Brooklyn or dealt drugs for the Russian mob, but I knew the hot shame of feeling I’d let everyone down, that my life was over before it began. A year or so before, I’d walked out of my university exams and almost been kicked out. Had that happened, there’s no chance I’d be writing this today.

Mainly, though, it was to do with the tenderly sketched father-son relationship. At the time, Cox was best known for playing villains, but as James Brogan he projects a careworn, crinkly decency I recognised. Hell, my dad even looks a little bit like Brian Cox.

‘I felt a kinship with Monty… mainly it was to do with the tenderly sketched father-son relationship‘

Over a rushed steak dinner with Monty, we learn all we need to about James. He sees the goodness in people (although IRL, Cox called the famously demanding Norton ‘a nice lad, but a bit of a pain in the arse’). He holds a lot of guilt for how he raised Monty after his wife died – ‘It wasn’t you, Pop,’ says Monty, simply, a conciliatory hand on his cheek. And he’s absolutely 100% a dad. ‘I’ll drive you, take half as long,’ James offers, a great, funny-causeit’s-true line. Who but a dad would be thinking about traffic at such a time and, anyway, why would Monty want to get to jail quicker? Most of all, what comes across is that he loves his son and would do anything for him. So, I know, would mine.

That final drive, when it comes, is devastating. In order to survive prison, Monty has asked Frank to beat him up and make him ugly. As he sits, bruised and broken, in his father’s passenger seat, it feels like he’s regressing to childhood when, suddenly, James suggests taking that left turn to freedom, spinning a fairy tale of escape in his reassuring Brooklyn-Irish burr. ‘We’ll drive. Keep driving. Head out to the middle of nowhere, take that road as far as it takes us.’ Out in the desert, he suggests, Monty can start over. ‘I’ll tell you don’t ever write me, don’t ever visit, I’ll tell you I believe in God’s kingdom, and I’ll see you and your mother again, but not in this lifetime.’

Just as we’re picturing Monty and Naturelle, old and happy, telling their kids, ‘This life came so close to never happening,’ we snap cruelly back to reality. Monty is daydreaming and still heading to jail. There will be no Shawshank-style redemption.

It’s a beautiful monologue, beautifully performed by Cox. But the reason it resonates so much for me is because it reminds me of my own father-son journeys – to university, full of hope; back from university filled with self-loathing; from teenage parties in pieces; to the bus station to leave forever – and all the times I wished that he and I could just drive, and keep driving.

Throughout those topsy-turvy days, I knew that, like James Brogan, he’d give his all to try and fix things for me, and that, whatever hell I was heading for, he’d be there when I got back. Just, ‘Gimme the word.’