A canary yellow vintage Super Bee pulls up short on a New York City street, and Monty Brogan gets out with his buddy Kostya to look at a dog lying in the road. The animal was mauled in a dogfight and Monty intends to shoot him but changes his mind after he looks him in the eye and decides to take him to a nearby clinic instead. Fast forward to late 2002. Monty is about to begin serving a seven-year prison sentence for dealing drugs. He sits in the park with his dog, Doyle, on his last day of freedom. He plans to meet childhood friends Frank and Jacob at a club with his girlfriend Naturelle. Frank Slaughtery is a hotshot trader on Wall Street and Jacob Elinsky is an introverted high school teacher with a crush on one of his 11th grade students. Five years after 9/11, Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: "Released 15 months after Sept. 11, 2001, Spike Lee's 25th Hour is the only great film dealing with the Sept. 11 tragedy... 25th Hour is as much an urban historical document as Rossellini's "Open City," filmed in the immediate aftermath of the Nazi occupation of Rome.
