Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Raetsonwe Redundant and unnecessary.

Predrag I think this is one of Spike Lee's best films - it deftly balances a compelling murder mystery with a wider portrait of the people, both innocent and less so, whose lives are warped by their community's decay in ways both obvious and subtle. The movie juggles a cast of a round dozen characters seemingly effortlessly, and with enough skill and density that you feel like you know them far better than their actual screen time would warrant. The cast is first-rate, the acting is excellent, the direction keeps the story moving at an exciting clip, and the music is a perfect balance of hip-hop beats with a more traditional score.Clockers keeps your attention with remarkable shots of the projects, excellent background music that rarely interferes with your ability to hear what's being spoken, and convincing acting that portrays the projects and the problem of drug crime exactly they way they exist in real life. Indeed, the film opens with actual photos of persons who were gunned down in drug wars along with murals on walls hoping that the departed rest in peace. Moreover, Clockers is not for children; nor is this film for the squeamish. There's a good deal of violence and blood; but the realism raises Clockers up to a five star high level of motion picture. Clockers also provides us with excellent social commentary about the remarkably harsh and brutal world of drug dealing.Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

viewsonfilm.com In the fall of 1995, I found myself in the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan (on a weekend leave from college) highly anticipating the newest Spike Lee film. Later that night, I viewed it in a large cineplex with possibly 20-25 screens. There were other action films, comedies, and dramas that I could have chosen from, but I had to see Lee's latest outing. He was a controversial director back then and still reins as one today. In the 90's, his films were a bit more mainstream than they are now. To me, they were like events. And after watching the trailer for Clockers, I knew I had to get to a viewing on opening night. Slightly disjointed, messy at times, yet totally absorbing, Clockers remains one of Spike Lee's most interesting and most forceful cinematic feats. It holds a varied cast of actors known and unknown (I'm just speculating but I think a lot of the people on screen were plucked off the street without any acting experience thus adding to the film's realism), a plethora of varied styles of directing, a fantastic opening credit sequence, and a massive need to get its message across. With most of Spike's films, you generally see a sort of sporadic narrative. Clockers has this but it still manages to be a solid helping from the Brooklyn- rooted director. Produced by legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese and based on a novel of the same name by Richard Price (he wrote the screenplay as well), Clockers tells the story of a small-time drug dealer named Ronald "Strike" Dunham (played by Mekhi Phifer who at the time, had never acted in a film before and got picked out of 1,000 people in an open casting call). He works with a bunch of other fellow dealers who are labeled "Clockers" (they are basically 24 hour drug pushers). When "Strike's" brother Victor Dunham (played by Isaiah Washington) is accused and confesses (in self defense) to murdering one of "Strike's" rival dealers working at a fast food restaurant, "Strike" is then somehow caught up in the whole investigation. He's pulled in different directions and has to take sides. This is based on his relentless pursuers being a morally concerned cop named Rocco Klein (played by Harvey Keitel who gives a Harvey Keitel-like performance) and a parasitic drug lord named Rodney Little (Oscar caliber stuff from Delroy Lindo). A couple of things to note about this film: the acting by the entire cast down to the bit players, the supporting players, and the leads is sensational in every way. Second: the drug solicitation scenes that are featured at various intervals are disturbingly real and authentic. As you view them, it feels less like you're watching a movie and more like you're experiencing real life as it happens. Registering at a running time of just over 2 hours, it's safe to say that there is a lot of movie to take in with Clockers. This vehicle is a character study, a drug flick, and a murder mystery all in one. You have a meaty script by Richard Price (he wrote The Color of Money and Ransom), a searing musical score from Terrence Blanchard (he's Lee's right hand man when it comes to musical scores), and an extremely dark- hued look from cinematographer Malik Hassan Sayeed. In essence, Spike Lee has every resource possible to flex his directorial wings. This is in my mind, one of the strongest turns he has ever put in as a director. His technique is exuberant. You get a lot of slow motion scenes (set to music of course), a shot that pans over the view of one of the film's most pivotal moments (a protective murder of a burnt out drug addict by a young boy), some solid jump cuts (at the beginning during one of the drug deals), and high energy flashbacks that are quick and to the point. A lot of the film's best sequences are not only set to Blanchard's score, but also to a mixed pop soundtrack with songs from Seal, Crooklyn Dodgers, Chaka Khan, and Rebelz of Authority.In conclusion, this is a heavy urban crime drama with powerfully realized, individual scenes. Clockers is no doubt, a solid interpretation of Lee's rather large body of work. He tries hard to be a good storyteller and sometimes slips a bit. But somehow someway, he still gets the job done here. The film's last ten minutes, which feel subdued, project a bit of a relief from all the chaos that came before it. They faithfully channel a feeling of radiant hope. This reassures the viewer that an exercise this depressing and melodic, can still end on a positive note. With that said, Clockers for me, was definitely worth a re-viewing. It's a Spike Lee Joint that "clocks in" as something I would wholeheartedly recommend.

gavin6942 Young drug pushers in the projects of Brooklyn live hard dangerous lives, trapped between their drug bosses and the detectives out to stop them.When watching this film, knowing it first went through the hands of Martin Scorsese, one cannot help but wonder how Spike Lee does it different than Scorsese would. The obvious answer is that Lee is able to provide an authenticity that Scorsese may not have. While it is not true that only black men can tell the stories of other black men, but few handle the material like Lee does. Scorsese would likely have shifted the emphasis to Rocco Klein, the white cop.And that would have worked, as well. Klein (played by Harvey Keitel) is the co-protagonist, as his search for the killer is an important plot point. Roger Ebert says, "He is a weary professional who acts as a witness to death. There is a tendency in his business not to linger too long over the death of one young drug dealer, but he cannot get stubborn questions out of his mind." Keitel does a fine job in this role, and it is nice to see him take his gritty gangster image and put a spin on it towards law enforcement.

ElMaruecan82 The title might give you a hint, "Clockers" is about routine, and not the most pleasant one.Indeed, this routine is made of drug-dealing and occasional murders. And if you think that you've been desensitized enough by police procedural and gangster movies, "Clockers" will be a powerful wake-up call. Honestly, I can't recall a film that dealt so straightforwardly with real-life violence apart from David Cronenberg's "A History of Violence" but that was 10 years after ''Clockers".The opening credits set the tone. Shots of young black persons' murdered are shown, blood staining the pavement and deadpan expression proving they didn't see what was coming to them. Lee doesn't stylize for aesthetic purposes but intelligently guide our expectations, loudly shouting what gangster films timidly whispers: this is an ugly word with no redeeming appeal whatsoever. No matter what it involves, it either ends up with jail of being the unintentional poser of bloody aftermaths' pictures. And their purpose is echoed in the murder scene, where lies Darryl Adams, a restaurant manager, shot four times.The sight of the body is disturbing but no more than the total detachment of the two assigned detectives played by Harvey Keitel and John Turturro. They comment the body with shocking detachment and cynical wisecracks such as "the kid had brains" while blood spilled over a hole in his head… I don't think Lee's intent is to portray these cops as racist or cynical, but to underline how routinely these murders became. This is not to brandish the 'racism' flag (Lee is above these clichés) but to remind us that these crimes are committed within the black community. So, no matter what you'd think of the cops, they're not the ones who pulled the trigger.We're used of that ambiguity regarding racism and this is a credit to Spike Lee's co-writing with Richard Price, who wrote the original novel. "Clockers" depicts a slice of people's life that encapsulates all the factors that lead to the opening 'pictures'. And that no-way-out situation is embodied by the main protagonist, Strike (Mekhi Phifer), a clocker working for Rodney (Delroy Lindo), the crime lord of the neighborhood. His job mainly consists on standing in the park and waiting for customers coming to buy crack. The process is well-elaborated, as there is a watcher to check for cop's arrivals, but eventual strip-searches are also part of this routine.The point is that clockers are at the bottom of the hierarchy, but that's their way of living. The issue of money is another layer of subtlety the film provides. Strike doesn't use money to date girls, buy a car or new clothes. Electric trains are his hobbies. Why? Why not? But we understand that he's trapped in that job for the simple reason is that it earns him enough money to fulfill his passion. On the other hand, his brother Victor (Isaiah Washington) is a honest, two-job worker and decent father forced to constantly swallow the bitter taste of frustration while watching brothers making easy money while he gets no respect and that's his routine.These brothers live in a world where money buys enough power to ooze respect. Both feel pressure in their lives, and the result is Victor's arrest and confession that he murdered Adams, claiming it was for self-defense, but there's something wrong in that murder Keitel's character can't get off his head. The case is even more complex because it was Strike who was supposed to kill Adams, to make his bones with Rodney and climb the 'social ladder'. The seemingly fatherly affection between Rodney and Strike is finally distorted when Rodney reveals the first time he killed a man, threatened with a gun on his mouth by Errol (Thomas Jefferson Byrd) a tough killer before he became the local AIDS-stricken psycho.Like for Rodney, Strike had to have blood on his hands, the point of no-return meaning trust. So, we get it, there are no feelings in such a dirty business. And as the investigation proceeds, Keitel gets more and more interested in Strike's case and wonder why he'd let his brother covering him, and why would a man like Victor kill Adams in the first place? To spare Strike the burden of belonging to Rodney, and in the process, vent all his anger? The procedural leaves to a satisfying resolution but it wasn't "Clockers' main point. The film is more about complex human interactions, because while Keitel and Phifer get closer one another, their mutual affection feel more real and genuine than with Rodney, and might pave the road to Strike's redemption.I know this 'redemption' word is kind of hackneyed, but I know Scorsese co-produced the film, and I felt some intense Scorsesian vibes in that gritty depiction of an underworld and the torment poisoning the main character's life, in the real meaning of the world since Strike is also victim of chronicle ulcer that gets bloodier as the film progresses, like a metaphor of his moral downfall and an imminent deadly conclusion. But there's a third significant character to enrich the film: Tyrone, a kid who admires Strike and imitates him to the point of shaving his head and wearing the same clothes. The kid is a younger version of Strike with Strike playing Rodney's mentor role, and ironically, the disciple shows more zeal and competence than his master. Tyrone's arc is a light of hope illuminating possible ways out of the hell… given you don't act like people acted with you.Tyrone evolves from the embodiment of Strike's disgrace to his redemption. And Strike is given the same chance, the possibility to count on people who don't help him because they like him, but because they hate that world enough to triumph over it by getting someone out of it. Indeed, there might be a right way and a wrong way but when trapped in such blinding routine, everybody needs a sign, or guidance.