If all this wasn’t enough for poor, privately educated, Monty to contend with, he can’t trust anyone any more. The cop who arrested him, told him his beautiful Hispanic girlfriend, Naturel, was the one who shopped him. His Ukrainian drug buddies are pretty shifty (but fatherly) as well. He feels he’s let down his salt-of-the-earth, ex-New York Fire Department, now bartender father (brilliantly understated performance from Brian Cox. If he carries on like this, the big man from Dundee’s going to end up being my favourite contemporary American actor.)

He digs up two old school friends – philosophical, Red Bull guzzling stockbroker, Frank - another good egg, and the unlikely, Jacob (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) - his poetry professor friend, who spends the film sweatily obsessing over a 17-year-old student.

Though reasonably likeable, as with most of Spike Lee’s later work, this film is hugely overblown in parts as it swings between smugness and sentimentality. Lee can’t seem to decide what he’s trying to say. The opening titles, showing various viewpoints of the lights from Ground Zero defiantly puncturing the night sky, and memorials to the firemen killed in September 11 in his dad’s bar suggest Lee’s trying to be first in to truly address America, post-Twin Towers. But then he seems to chicken out or lose his way. Monty’s rant at himself and every ethnic group in NYC in the mensroom mirror in his father’s pub (and its dénouement towards the end of the film) seem out of place, as if Lee enjoyed Norton’s internal monologue in ‘Fight Club’ so much, he wanted it for his own film. Also, as is all too sadly common in Lee’s films, the director’s own voice keeps intruding on his character’s dialogue, making them suddenly spurt diatribes that Lee obviously feels strongly about, but seem out of place when suddenly foisted upon the characters in question.

The Lee trademark searing brass, bluesy soundtrack keeps bursting in at emotional moments with all the subtlety of the bouzoukis in the Monty Python sketch. The ending is over-explained, as if Lee had 4 potential endings, couldn’t decide on his favourite, so used them all. At the same time, too many loose ends are left hanging. Why drag Phillip Seymour Hoffman and his desire for his student into the proceedings, only to leave him floundering about for most of the film, much like the dog he ends up being dumped with? There’s also too much back-story, as if, having created histories for his characters, Lee felt the need to explain their entire lives to us. Having said all this, the film was reasonably engaging and is a refreshingly fresh take on the anti-jail/anti-crime theme. Just feel, like Monty, Spike Lee is badly in need of a friend he can trust (in the editing suite.)

Laura Hird is the Orange and Whitbread nominated author of the collection, ‘Nail and Other Stories’ and novel, ‘Born Free.’ Her short stories have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies internationally. Her new collection of short stories is due to be published by Canongate Books in May 2005. She runs and edits her own loosely arts-related website on which she seeks out and publishes new poetry, short stories, reviews, interviews etc. She was born and lives in Edinburgh.

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© 2004 Laura Hird All rights reserved.