With "Clockers" filmmaker Spike Lee pays homage to the gritty realism of 70's cinematography and brings us what is probably his second-best film ever. One might want to call it an homage to Blacksploitation pictures of that era, but this wouldn't be entirely correct. Lee's film has a rich tapestry of story and an important message to deliver. Co-produced by a master of gritty 70's realism, Martin Scorsese, who apparently developed the film for Robert De Niro prior to Lee acquiring it, the film is a harsh indictment against life in the hood. Lee's film looks gritty, grainy and littered. I know no catch phrase for this style, so I call it 70's Gritty Realism. I'll invent the catch phrase here.

Lee starts the film with grainy still shots of the newly dead, the newly murdered. The texture of these photos set the tone for the look of the entire film. Lee mixes this style into what might just be another "life in the 'hood" film if it weren't so brilliantly executed and so sorely needed. Just as 90% of gay films in the 90's have to be about AIDS, 90% of black films in the 90's have to be indictments against gangs, drugs and violence. Lee turns over the rock of this threat to America (because it hurts all of us) and cinematically exposes the twisted, cold, wormy, world underneath.

The film follows a youth (newcomer Mekhi Phifer as Strike) who wants to rise in the ranks of a drug operation, run by Delroy Lindo. He is asked/told to murder a guy who might be causing a problem in the organization and he seems willing to do so, even though he struggles with his conscience over doing it.

Eventually the cops, played by Harvey Keitel and John Turturro, come on the scene when the deed is done. We get to watch Lee travel through this house of cards he has so expertly built until it all comes crumbling down around us.

Lee accomplishes much here with his willingness to explore all the aspects of this situation and his ability to never hurry. We get so many sidelines and sub-plots here that we fell like we are reading the novel by Richard Price (who co-scripted with Lee here) on which this film is based and not just watching a movie. We see some of the dealings within the police department. Lee explores the idea of manhood and fatherhood within the poor black community. He explores the roles of women as mother-protectors, the business side of drug dealing, the examples set for youth, the violence, the lost life and the cost of living. He explores the role of petty criminals in our society as well as exposing them as more then stereotypes. He tells their stories as if they were are fathers, our brothers and our sons. It is a rich and amazing tapestry filmed with a grainy realism and a glaring eye.

Recalling Scorsese, Lee's film seems like it could have been made in the late 70's even with it's modern trappings, like beepers, huge malt liquor bottles marketed to the black community and new cars. Lee seems to be making a little bit of a statement about the way films reflect this violence as an art-form. He explores the influence of violence in our pop culture by showing us this. He also shows us it's impact on fashion with shirts covered with pictures of guns and violent messages, with graffiti and with video games. He explores violence in music with rap songs peppered throughout the film. He even sets the film in motion with a group of black youth having a conversation about rappers that recalls the initial scene in Quentin Tarintino's "Reservoir Dogs."

But Lee, of course, counters all of this with the message of peace. The opening credits feature a wonderful, imploring, slow song by Stevie Wonder. Lee also peppers the film with melancholy R&B songs and sorrowful jazz scored by Terrence Blanchard. He shows us billboards imploring for an end to the violence. He gives us a wonderful minor character of a mother-protector who pops up periodically to decry all that she sees going on around her and the influence it has on her son. It's subtle yet powerful. It underlines the film with hope.

On yet another level, notice the sub-text about police officers here. They are, of course, shown to be semi-racist and arrogant, but it goes much deeper than that. They are shown to be misguided perpetrators of what they are supposed to be combating. Notice the humorous tone they adopt at crime scenes. It doesn't surprise us when Keitel and Turturro drink on the job in their car and then "litter" the streets that they are trying to "clean-up" by throwing their liquor bottles out of their car window. Also, note the amount of times a beeper goes off and both cop and suspect are wearing the devices. Lee blurs the line between good-guy and bad-guy here until no one is all good and no one is all bad. In the end, he allows that either might be willing to do a good deed here - or to have good intentions as easily as they might be corrupted.

Another wonderful touch in the film is the use of an ailment conflicting the main character. Lee's anti/hero here suffers unmercifully throughout the last half of the film. In a Fasbinderian touch, the psychological pressure this character feels results in a physical manifestation. Coughing up large quantities of bloody phlegm while doubled over in pain may seem highly obvious on screen but Lee handles it so matter-of-fact-ly, so normally, that it becomes real. Although cinematic, it is non-the-less striking.

As in "Do the Right Thing," Lee's best film to date, the director/writer gives us numerous minor characters here to act as our tour-guides. The haunting future of the main character is expressed in a minor character who is dying from his lifestyle. A confessed drug dealer, we aren't sure if it is the drugs or AIDS caused by drug use that has left this character so decrepit. We aren't supposed to know. The future haunts us like a crazy, wavering ghost. It is frightening and sad. It scares us and makes us take note. When this character confronts the future, personified by a youngster, the resulting scene is harrowing and hypnotic. Lee takes us deep into the life-force he is exploring here and never relents in his conviction to show us all.

Meanwhile, on screen, the acting here is excellent. Many little-known black actors fill the screen with a realism that we might not even notice. The acting is so natural that we believe the actors are the characters they play. It's hard to believe they're actors. It helps that we only slightly recognize some of these faces as they take us into another world. It's a world I, as a middle-class white guy, simply do not know. Meanwhile, the white actors mainly play cops. Keitel is his usual excellent self here and he fills a role tailor-made for him. He brings new life to it though by being cast in the middle of all this unknown territory. He seems hard and determined. He comes across as a real cop and not an actor. The script also leaves his motivation unexposed so that he becomes more complex and more mysterious to us. It allows us to interpret our own reasons as to why his character does what he does here. It's masterful. Meanwhile, Turturro, who played a semi-racist for in Lee in "Do the Right Thing," reprises that subtlety here. Forced into the background by the script and by Keitel's glaring presence, Turturro eventually begins to disappear almost entirely and seems to phone in his appearance. But maybe that's the kind of cop his character is too.

"Clockers" works because it gives us so much. The ending is a bit ambiguous and Lee doesn't try to fill in too many of the holes, but that's okay. The message is the reason for the film anyway, The message becomes the film's true ending. Lee's film trails of into the future offering us hope and allowing us to see deeper into something we might never have otherwise even noticed or realized. As in "School Daze," Lee rings a bell at the end of the film - he gives us yet another wake-up call. But some 7 years after that initial cinematic message from the auteur, he does it with more subtlety, style and grace here. This time when the bells rings at the finale, we don't see it on the screen, we hear it in our heads.

Note: Lee acts as co-scripter, co-producer and director. He also puts in an appearance in what amounts to a cameo.

"Clockers" is a term used here to describe someone who deals drugs, in particular crack, for a living. The origin of the term is never explained. it has been explained to me as someone who hustles for money continuously, someone who is always "on the clock."

It's interesting that the youths discuss Chuck D at the film's begining in that Lee also used this artist in "Do the Right Thing." Lee also directed Chuck D's video for "Fight the Power."

While Lee was making this film, Scorsese was making "Casino" with De Niro. When scorsese had the project the title was "The Neighborhood."

Review written in 1995

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