CLOCKERS
A film review by Anthony E. Wright
Copyright 1995 Anthony E. Wright
Except for two cameo shots, Spike Lee does not appear in this film about a low-level drug dealer in the New York projects. Yet his unique directing style is overwhelmingly present, enough to almost stifle the story's own merits. Yet his skills and the solid work of the cast also makes this movie worth seeing.
Even more than most Lee projects, CLOCKERS is less concerned with moving a plot along than with presenting a world, a situation. (You probably remember the premise and character of previous Lee movies that the actual story.) He gives us another wonderful version of Brooklyn verite, complete with high-rise projects juxtaposed with the concrete pavement below, and the bodegas and Associated grocery stores in the background. Like in most other Lee films, this is also a provincial story, where most of the action takes place on a few select blocks: No helicopter shots of New York, we see the mundane, redundant landscape of the characters, and feel the virtual walls that keep them there.
Unlike the colorful scenes of DO THE RIGHT THING or MO BETTER BLUES, this picture is a dreary grey. The cinematography goes a little overboard but keeps the film visually interesting, with Lee's signature shots of slow-motion cars and close-ups with moving backgrounds, as well as fresher and stunning work when dealing with "What If?" flashbacks. The momento is set by the horn music that seems lifted from SCHOOL DAZE or JUNGLE FEVER and a heavy dose of rap.
The plot is quickly set-up in the beginning: A night manager at a burger joint has four bullets pummeled through him; the confessed murderer is a "decent" black father of two that holds two jobs to keep the family afloat, and never has been in legal trouble before. While one of the investigating white cops is willing to leave it at that (John Turturro), the other (Harvey Keitel) think that the confessor is covering for his drug dealing brother Strike (Mekhi Phifer), and by association his boss Rodney (Delroy Lindo).
But then nothing much happens; the plot stops for an hour. The audience is introduced to these characters and several others, playing various parts in a morality tale in which no one is pure and blameless. There is a lot of didactic talk here, from Rodney telling Strike never to use the crack he sells, to Strike telling a local kid Tyrone to study in school. But perhaps we are meant to take this preaching with a grain of salt: despite the lectures by Andre, a "good black cop," or Tyrone's mother, nothing much changes. In fact, we see how each generation gets implicated and steeped into the criminal culture. In a frightening scene, Rodney learns how to kill from his supposed "best friend," and his lessons get passed on to Strike, and then to Tyrone and a whole new group of children. The culture, the film suggests, is reinforced by certain types of rap (but thankfully separates that from the "positive" works of the genre) and even by video games which show a virtual reality that is more reality than virtuous.
This elaborate set-up also includes the inner workings of a drug deal; the routine of the police that surveil the dealers, and the hobbies of Strike. After all this, the last act contains the vestiges of some intriguing police work, which gets closer to the truth but nothing is fully resolved. To underscore that point, the film ends ultimately not on any of the characters and their respective fates, but on yet another murder in the projects, which brings resonance to the opening credits sequence that zoom in on crime scene photos.
The reason to go see this film is the atmosphere that Lee creates; it isn't his best film, certainly, but it has its provocative moments, fraught with a moral complexity that is great to argue about and impossible to settle. Lee gets in his own way sometimes, but ultimately he comes through.
-- Anthony E. Wright
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