Critical Moviegoers

By Benjamín Nelson Valenzuela Salvatierra

There are movies that you can watch just to have a good time, maybe some laughter. There are other movies that will take you deeply into some sort of reflexive thoughts. It might depend on your mood, to decide what you prefer to watch, but let me tell you about a good movie for those moments when you feel like thinking a little. The 25th Hour is one of those movies that will surely make you think about your own life. Indeed, it will make you think about human relationships. Edward Norton is on the verge of becoming an academy-winner from my point of view, especially with this kind of performance. Here, playing a drug dealer, he is caught by the police, being sentenced to 7 years of prison. The story follows with the last day of this drug dealer as a free man.

Throughout the story, you realize that this particular drug dealer was not someone that you could accuse of being a bad man, he had made mistakes (a lot), but then again, he was not the kind of man full of evil. Monty (Norton) was actually part of the high-school’s basketball team. The problem was that he started to sell marihuana to some students. Later, he enjoyed the easy money so much, that he couldn’t stop his wrong ways. Monty recognizes, in one of the greatest scenes of the movie, that he had it all to succeed. He knew his life was promising, and yet he blew it all. Moreover, his high-school friends were not the kind of friends you would call best friend forever. They were more like the kind of classmate you have been in touch with, but not necessarily a legit friend. They also recognize they were not acting right, when they witnessed Monty taking bad decisions over and over again.

Finally, as he approaches to his deadline, he and his own process take more importance, he decides that he can’t look good when entering prison and makes his own friend beat him. Somehow, it was a desperate move, but he thought it could help. In the end, another great scene happens. His father is the man who does the narration in the ending now. He builds a life to his own son, in order to avoid prison. No detail is left behind and everything seems to work out quite good. Again, an outstanding ending for this movie, that makes you feel in the mood to rethink some things. The movie ends with an outstanding script. “It all came so close to never happening. This life came so close to never happening.”