IF YOU spend a lot of time pondering 25th Hour's meaning you sure to be in a lot of company. This is one of those movies that's rich for analysis and it's bound to be stuck on the syllabuses of film studies classes across the country.

But don't let that put you off.

You can analyse the multi-layered meaning of the film, picking apart the significance of its firm location in post-9/11 New York (one of the principle characters has an apartment that overlooks Ground Zero), the relationship of the lead character, Monty (Norton) to his Latin American girlfriend, Naturelle (Dawson), Monty's "I hate everyone" diatribe to himself in the mirror and so on.

Or you can just enjoy it as a thoughtful drama about a man who is trying to put his life in order before embarking on a seven-year prison sentence for drug

dealing.

And this is probably the most interesting angle to look at the story from - to take it as a morality tale about a man who has realised too late that he has screwed up his life and who accepts that he has done wrong and has to pay the price.

The film sees Monty go on a journey from blaming others for his predicament - he is suspicious that Naturelle may have set him up - to accepting that he has to take responsibility for his own choices and their outcome.

The time-frame of the film - all the action takes place over a 24-hour period (the 25th hour being the one where he goes to prison, the presence of which dominates the rest of the film) - meaning that Spike Lee has chance to explore his characters and their interrelationships.

Norton is fantastic as Monty, and it's impossible not to like him and to wish, along with him, that he had made different choices.

The film toys with Hollywood happy endings, with an 'if only' sequence, but ultimately it is grittily grounded in real life - but you'd expect no less from Lee.

Rating: 8/10