25th Hour
Published by Duc June 3rd, 2003 in EntertainmentSome people are so astoundingly idiotic. I just watched 25th Hour and it was cool, so I figured I’d read some reviews from both professionals and amateurs. Most comments were overwhelmingly positive. But more than a few people complained about how racist and offensive one of the scenes in the movie was. How stupid can they be? These are the same uneducated, illiterate bastards who want Huckleberry Finn banned from high schools.
The scene in question is one in which the main character, Monty Brogan, played brilliantly by Edward Norton, looks into a mirror and begins ranting and raving about all the things and people he hates. Seems pretty offensive at first. But the last line of the soliloquy makes it glaringly obvious that the rant is his attempt to blame others for his problems. In the end he clearly accepts responsibility. It couldn’t possibly be more simply expressed.
So anyway, I scoured the web looking for a transcript of the scene and I couldn’t find one. So using my trusty DVD player with the subtitles turned on, I’ve transcribed it myself. Hopefully someone using the same search terms that I did will be able to find this.
| (sees “Fuck you!” written on mirror)Real Monty: Yeah, fuck you too. Mirror Monty: Fuck the panhandlers grubbing for money, smiling at me behind my back. Fuck the squeegee men dirtying up the clean windshield of my car. Get a fucking job. Fuck the Sikhs and the Pakistanis bombing down the avenues in decrepit cabs, curry steaming out their pores, stinking up my day. Terrorists in fucking training. Slow the fuck down! Fuck the Chelsea Boys with their waxed chests and pumped-up biceps, going down on each other in my parks and on my piers, jiggling their dicks on my Channel 35. Fuck the Korean grocers with their pyramids of overpriced fruit and their tulips and roses wrapped in plastic. Ten years in the country, still no speakee English. Fuck the Russians in Brighton Beach. Mobster thugs sitting in cafes, sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their teeth, wheelin’ and dealin’ and schemin’. Go back where you fucking came from. Fuck the black-hatted Hasidim strolling up and down 47th Street in their dirty gabardine with their dandruff, selling South African apartheid diamonds. Fuck the Wall Street brokers. Self-styled masters of the universe. Michael Douglas-Gordon Gekko wannabe motherfuckers figuring out new ways to rob hard-working people blind. Send those Enron assholes to jail for fucking life. You think Bush and Cheney didn’t know about that shit? Give me a fucking break. Imclone. Adelphia. Worldcom. Fuck the Puerto Ricans. Twenty to a car, swelling up the welfare rolls. Worst fucking parade in the city. And don’t even get me started on the Dominicans, ’cause they make the Puerto Ricans look good. Fuck the Bensonhurst Italians with their pomaded hair, their nylon warmup suits, their St. Anthony medallions, swinging their Jason Giambi Louisville Slugger baseball bats trying to audition for “The Sopranos”. Fuck the Upper East Side wives with their Hermes scarves and their $50 Balducci artichoke. Overfed faces getting pulled and lifted and stretched all taut and shiny. You’re not fooling anybody, sweetheart. Fuck the Uptown brothers. They never pass the ball, they don’t want to play defense, they take five steps on every layup to the hoop, and then they want to turn around and blame everything on the white man. Slavery ended 137 years ago. Move the fuck on. Fuck the corrupt cops with their anus-violating plungers and their 41 shots, standing behind a blue wall of silence. You betray our trust! Fuck the priests who put their hands down some innocent child’s pants. Fuck the church that protects them, delivering us into evil. And while you’re at it, fuck J.C. He got off easy — a day on the cross, a weekend in hell, and all the hallelujahs of the legioned angels for eternity. Try seven years in fucking Otisville, J. Fuck Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and backward-ass cave-dwelling fundamentalist assholes everywhere. On the names of innocent thousands murdered, I pray you spend the rest of eternity with your 72 whores roasting in a jet-fuel fire in hell. You towel-headed camel jockeys can kiss my royal Irish ass. Fuck Jacob Elinsky. Whining malcontent. Fuck Francis Xavier Slaughtery, my best friend, judging me while he stares at my girlfriend’s ass. Fuck Naturelle Riviera. I gave her my trust and she stabbed me in the back. Sold me up the river. Fucking bitch. Fuck my father with his endless grief, standing behind that bar, sipping on club soda, selling whiskey to firemen and cheering the Bronx Bombers. Fuck this whole city and everyone in it, from the row houses of Astoria to the penthouses on Park Avenue, from the projects in the Bronx to the lofts in Soho, from the tenements in Alphabet City to the brownstones in Park Slope to the split-levels in Staten Island, let an earthquake crumble it, let the fires rage, let it burn to fucking ash, and then let the waters rise and submerge this whole rat-infested place. Real Monty: (tries to rub off “Fuck you!” from mirror) |
It’s best with Ed Norton delivering the lines and the associated video clips. Anyway, I don’t see much ambiguity there. It reminds me of that hoopla over a comic in the Daily Targum (the Rutgers paper) that was obviously anti-slavery but got slammed for days (if not weeks). I forget how it went, but one panel had a girl talking about Africans coming here and a guy responding with something like, “Yeah, in a slave ship!” Clearly the guy was outraged by whatever the girl was saying, but lots of people on campus didn’t see it that way. It still angers me to this day how the comic’s author was criticized.
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