Strong performances are reason enough for the audience to endure 129 minutes of Clockers.
Clockers (1995)
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Reviews Counted:45
Fresh:30
Rotten:15
Average Rating:6.4/10
Runtime: 2 hrs 9 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Director Spike Lee examines the violent world of urban drug dealing through the eyes of Strike (Mekhi Phifer), a 19-year-old "clocker," short for round-the-clock pusher. Strike agrees to kill a... Director Spike Lee examines the violent world of urban drug dealing through the eyes of Strike (Mekhi Phifer), a 19-year-old "clocker," short for round-the-clock pusher. Strike agrees to kill a fellow employee of his boss Rodney Little (Delroy Lindo), an influential, popular drug lord. But when the hit goes down, it is Strike's moral, law-abiding brother Victor (Isaiah Washington) who confesses, shocking everyone. The detective assigned to the case, Rocco Klein (Harvey Keitel), doesn't believe Victor--the more that Klein, along with others in Strike's life, start putting the heat on, the more the clocker finds himself up against the wall. The question is: Who is the real killer? A gritty, realistic adaptation of Richard Price's best-selling novel, Lee's film is also one of his most highly invigorating. Shooting with a gritty, washed-out film stock, with startling moments of saturated primary color, CLOCKERS feels like a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the daily lives of a group of New York City drug dealers, featuring a star-making performance by Phifer. [More]
Starring: Mekhi Phifer, Harvey Keitel, Delroy Lindo, John Turturro
Starring: Mekhi Phifer, Harvey Keitel, Delroy Lindo, John Turturro, Isaiah Washington, Keith David, Pee Wee Love, Thomas Jefferson Byrd, Regina Taylor, Brendan Kelly
Director: Spike Lee
Director: Spike Lee
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Reviews for Clockers
Clockers uses unexpected narrative turns to accentuate the themes of lost innocence and uncultivated potential, and affirms that tragic melodrama is not a prerequisite for emotional impact.
Conveys the conflicting factions in ghetto areas where black-on-black violence makes death a member of the family.
Lee captures the despair, self-delusion, occasional terror and frequent humor of a praised and popular novel, aided by the potent acting his direction virtually guarantees.
Although Clockers is, as I suggested, a murder mystery, in solving its murder, it doesn't even begin to find a solution to the system that led to the murder. That is the point.
Lee's movie feels like a two-hour public service announcemnt on the evils of drugs, bad cops and black-on-black violence.
Clockers is messy and didactic, but it's complex in a way that a tidy film can't be.
Has the strengths of Spike Lee's best work without the preachiness and gimmicky camera moves of his weakest.
Mercifully, the audacious Lee keeps his goofy stylistic technique a bit more in check than in some of his other films, but a little goes a long way and still tends to undermine the storytelling ability of his work.
What we get mostly in the film is a sense of Lee flailing, struggling to get a handle on his material.
Spike Lee gets a good perfromance from newcomer Phifer as the young crack dealer, but the movie is diffuse, paying too much attention to the urban environment and not enough to the personas and dilemmas of the central characters.
A study of the urban dope-dealing culture and its toll on everyone who comes in contact with it, the picture has an insider's feel that is constantly undercut by the filmmaker's impulse to editorialize.
The performances are strong, but the spectator often feels adrift in an overly busy intrigue.
Latest News for Clockers
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From director Joe Roth and screenwriter Richard Price comes "Freedomland," an apparently racially-charged kidnapping thriller that stars Samuel L. Jackson, Julianne... More...
June 23, 2005:
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