25th Hour^[1] is a 2002 film directed by Spike Lee and adapted by David Benioff from his novel of the same title^[2]. The film stars Edward Norton as Monty Brogan, a man spending his final day of freedom in his New York City life before leaving to spend his seven-year prison sentence for dealing heroin. 25th Hour is available to stream on Hoopla with a Queens Public Library Card.

Monty Brogan was a good looking, well-educated, star basketball player in New York City, the opportunity capital of the world; he was set to have it all—The American Dream was his for the taking. Instead, he’s going to prison. In 25th Hour, Spike Lee explores the mythic nature of the American Dream through the rage of those who feel entitled to its promises and shortchanged by its reality.

As Monty and his father, James, drive away from Manhattan toward the prison where Monty will be serving his sentence, James describes a plan to flee to the west and build a new life. The images on screen shift into a surreal white toned color-palette as James narrates the sequence of events: the first step is to drive all the way west. They’ll find a desolate town and share one last whiskey before they part. Then, Monty will find a job somewhere that pays cash, somewhere they don’t care about his identity. Next, he will get himself papers. Then, he can pay to move his girlfriend, Naturelle, out with him. James tells Monty to get himself a new family and to raise them right. Finally, years down the line, he can tell them his story; he can tell them how lucky they are. The narration stops, we see the car has just crossed the George Washington Bridge, and Monty is asleep, his face still battered. This dream sequence employs classic tropes of the American dream, including: Christian values, aesthetic qualities, land and home ownership, the nuclear family, and being self-made.

James describes the country, the “Mountains, hills, cows, farms, and white churches.” By closing this list with churches, this vision suggests the Christian faith and the religious freedom of America as part of its very landscape. Freedom of religion is fundamental to the country and is in fact the first amendment to the United States Constitution: “Under the U.S. Constitution, religious freedom is the right for everyone to practice his or her religion, or to choose not to practice a religion at all”^[3] Significant here however is the description: “white churches.” On the one hand, this can refer to the churches being painted white, but it can additionally refer to the members of the congregation or the roots of the church itself, in white Christian tradition. This inclusion draws on the religious freedom so vital to The American ideal, while also suggesting that the religion at the heart of the nation is itself rooted in whiteness. This echoes a line in the Langston Hughes poem, “Song for a Dark Girl”: “I asked the white Lord Jesus/ What was the use of prayer.^[4]” Like Hughes’ “white Lord,” the “white churches” portray the religious backbone of the nation as being restricted to white religion. Spike Lee uses further tropes of what the American Dream visually looks like to explore this dream.

When Monty first arrives in the new dream town, he wears the clothes of his New York City life; as he establishes himself as the All-American man, his black trousers and sneakers are traded for faded blue Levi jeans and roper boots, his goatee is shaved to a cowboy style mustache. So too as Naturelle arrives, her elegant dress is exchanged for a cowboy hat. As his dream family is envisioned, they wear all white and stand in front of a white house. These images speak to the American dream not just as a set of beliefs, but also as a set of aesthetic values. The dream can be defined visually. This says much of the messaging around the dream. It exists not as something just to believe in, but as something that can be sold and commodified. Levis and a sparkling white house are as much a part of the dream as anything, we as the audience recognizing these visual symbols speaks to how ingrained the picture is.

The house they stand in front is more significant than just its visuals however. Home ownership has been rooted in the idea of westward-expansion since its inception: "After the war with Mexico, a number of developments supported the growth of the homestead movement. Economic prosperity drew unprecedented numbers of immigrants to America, many of whom also looked westward for a new life… Any U.S. citizen, or intended citizen, who had never borne arms against the U.S. Government could file an application and lay claim to 160 acres of surveyed Government land"^[5].

As Monty and his family pose in front of their home, we see this concept continue in the modern dream. What the home-ownership fantasy excludes is that “The distribution of western land by the Federal Government cannot be extricated from Federal Indian policy. The period from 1870 to 1900 marked a departure from earlier policies that were dominated by removal, treaties, reservations, and even war.^[5]” The picturesque American home is built on land directly stolen from natives; of course Monty's mythological fantasy does not acknowledge this.

Hand in hand with the idea of land and home ownership is the American family. As Monty’s family stands in front of the house, we see two adult couples and two children; presumably his two children and their spouses, as well as his two grandchildren. The family unit historically is part of the American messaging around the land. In John Winthrop’s infamous 1630 speech as the Puritans approached America, he proclaimed ““For wee [sic] must consider that wee [sic] shall be as a citty [sic] upon a hill. The eies [sic] of all people are upon us.” Winthrop also recalled God’s instruction in the Bible about the need to expand and prosper, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it. ^[6]” This idea of populating the land as a way of ruling over it continued into the 19th century’s Manifest Destiny, as John O’Sullivan wrote, it is “Our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.^[6]” This mindset treats the family as a source of power and possession. James' own speech reflects this as he tells Monty, “You have a son, maybe you name him James, it’s a good strong name.” For James and Monty’s own vision, the dream is to have a powerful son to carry their name on. The implications of this mirror those same historical ones of American exceptionalism and the American family subduing the land they are entitled to.

Throughout many of the elements of the American Dream presented in this film, is the concept of being self-made. In the fantasy, Monty must start a new job as a nobody, create a stable footing for himself, get to know his community, and eventually create a new name and identity. He will build a home in this wild frontier. Establish a family. There will be no help from the government, no handouts from friends or family, he must do it all. These elements only require that he do the work. This dream is available to him if he can pull himself up by his bootstraps. This messaging is persistent throughout the nation’s history. We hear it today as politicians and their supporters decry those receiving government assistance: “If only they worked harder!” This belief is what much of the American Dream is predicated on: if you do the work, you can be whatever you want—you can achieve anything. The realities of James and Monty’s lives in this film suggest otherwise.

James' life represents an iteration of the American Dream. He served his country as a firefighter, he owns a small business where he and his friends watch baseball, and his son, Monty, was set up to be a great success. This life on the surface seems to represent many of the promises of the patriotic ideal. However, we see its darker side as the film unravels.

James served honorably as a firefighter, but we see him wrestling with his post-firefighter life. "Firefighters demonstrate significantly high levels of psychological disorders such as depression and PTSD. A previously unexplored risk factor for psychopathology in firefighters is active retirement. Retirement can lead to a decline in psychological functioning, as well as a decline in a person’s self-concept clarity through group loss"^[7]. We learn that he is a recovering alcoholic, this substance abuse may be his own response to these disorders firefighters face. Now he runs his own bar; this is another tenet of the American Dream: owning a small business. However, bartending also poses serious threats of alcoholism. “Bartenders have a higher risk of dying from alcoholism when compared to the rest of the working population. Bartenders are 2.33 times more likely to die from alcoholism than the average employee"^[8]. We do not learn everything about James' alcoholism, but given the history of  mental health struggles in firefighters and alcohol abuse amongst bartenders, we see that these careers have left James shortchanged. By all accounts James should be living the American dream, but instead he is battling addiction and struggling to make ends meet; his wife has died, and his son, who he hoped could keep the dream alive—is going to prison.

As Monty visits his old high school, Coventry Prep School, we explore the potential he had. As he talks with a faculty member in the hallway he points out his photo in the trophy case. “I started though: freshman year, I was on the varsity, Point-Guard. I still hold the all-time assist record.” The woman responds to tell him the record was broken last year. He responds disappointed: “Well, we were undefeated that year. Then I got kicked off the team and the whole thing fell apart.” This example represents Monty’s broader experience with life: flourishing success brought to an end by the consequences he brings upon himself. In this past example, his basketball career was cut short by getting kicked off of the team; in his present life, he is losing his friends, family, dog, and home, as he leaves for prison.

His father laments the success Monty could have had as they share their final meal at his bar. “You could’ve been anything you wanted—doctor—lawyer.” His father: who was a fire-fighter and now a barkeep, had his own aspirations of the things his son could accomplish. Unlike the working class, dangerous, unreliable, and less-valued jobs he’s held, he sees his son achieving something more secure, and monetarily rewarding. Instead, he is having a final supper before he is imprisoned. James' own American Dream was for his son: that by providing him the life he did, Monty would achieve the things he never had.

Despite the consequences he is about to face, Monty has achieved a version of the American Dream too. He has a family in Naturelle and his dog Doyle, a community in his friends Frank and Jacob, a large apartment in Uptown Manhattan, and a job that he has hustled to build this version of success. These are many of the same elements of his final American Dream. However, each is less idealistic in reality. Instead of Naturelle being his wife that he is having children with, they have a strained relationship. She makes comments about how they will probably not have kids. Instead of embracing the western aesthetic, she has gotten a tattoo of the Puerto Rican flag; Monty is upset by this. Instead of a family of healthy children, he has a rescue dog that he must give away. As opposed to the picturesque home of his dreams, a home built on land he owns, in reality he rents an apartment. His drug-dealing business stems from being self-made, from hard work. However, this success is unstable and his prison sentence is the finale of it crashing down upon him. He feels the dream is less than he was promised.

From this feeling of being shortchanged by the dream stems Monty’s rage. As he stares in the mirror and reads the graffiti “Fuck You,” he launches into a prejudiced tirade. His rant curses everyone: ethnic groups, women, those with less money, those with more, his friends and his family—Monty knows that his own actions have brought him this reality, but instead of accepting that, he blames the society around him, this is easier than admitting his shortcomings. In this private moment we see a rage that is alive inside of him constantly. He concludes the speech by cursing himself and admitting his fault, but this does not erase his outburst and the rage that informed it. His dream in the finale of the film explains this rage. The picturesque American life: this is what he feels entitled to—it’s unattainable and mythic nature has created this violence and hate within him.

1. ↑ 25th Hour. Directed by Spike Lee, Disney Enterprises, Inc, 2003.
2. ↑ Benioff, David. The 25th Hour. Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2000.
3. ↑ "Religious Freedom". Americanbar.org. 2025. Retrieved 10 June 2025.
4. ↑ Hughes, Langston. "Song for a Dark Girl". Poets.org. Retrieved 10 June 2025.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Potter and Schamel, Lee Ann and Wynell (15 August 2016). "The Homestead Act of 1862". National Archives. Retrieved 10 June 2025.
6. ↑ ^{a b} Smithsonian American Art Museum (2025). "America's Manifest Destiny". American Experience. Retrieved 10 June 2025.
7. ↑ Pepper, Jordana Simone (2021). "Assessment of Psychological Functioning in Retired Firefighters". NSU Works. Retrieved 10 June 2025.
8. ↑ "Alcoholism and the Service Industry". Alcohol Help. 5 June 2025. Retrieved 10 June 2025.