Strike is a young city drug pusher under the tutelage of drug lord Rodney Little. When a night manager at a fast-food restaurant is found with four bullets in his body, Strike’s older brother turns himself in as the killer. Det. Rocco Klein doesn’t buy the story, however, setting out to find the truth, and it seems that all the fingers point toward Strike & Rodney.
Harvey Keitel John Turturro Delroy Lindo Mekhi Phifer Isaiah Washington Keith David Peewee Love Regina Taylor Thomas Jefferson Byrd Sticky Fingaz Fredro Starr Elvis Nolasco Lawrence B. Adisa Hassan Johnson Frances Foster Michael Imperioli Lisa Arrindell Paul Calderon Brendan Kelly Mike Starr Graham Brown Steve White Spike Lee Shawn McLean Arthur J. Nascarella Harry Lennix Bray Poor Craig McNulty Christopher Wynkoop Show All…
Camellos [Clockers], Camellos
USAR
Spain18
PortugalM/16
France16
UK18
Germany16
France
Germany
Portugal
Spain
UK
USA
a fascinating blend of price's gritty, procedural writing and lee's very stylized, openly emotional direction. beat david simon to similar territory he would explore in s1 of The Wire regarding the complex community relationships involved in low-level drug-dealing and the never-ending war on drugs but where that had a journalistic realism and pessimism spike instead brings his colorful, musical warmth you'll find in something like Mo' Better Blues or Crooklyn (he can't help it, he loves these kids and he loves the personalities that make up a neighborhood) which makes it all the more heart-breaking when the violence and complications and cycles of this situation reveal themselves. the ending here where a man is forcefully exiled from the only place he's ever known also feels a bit like a test run for one of my favourite in spike's career: 25th Hour.
This is Spike Lee's RASHOMON; splintered perspectives, shifting timelines, and morally ambiguous intentions. The first hour is a masterpiece, beginning with one of the great credits sequences of all-time. I love that the reason Keitel takes such a strong interest in this case is that he feels like someone is pulling the wool over his eyes, and that won't fly. The film slips slightly in the latter stages simply because it loses steam and becomes stylistically more banal. But how could it keep up such an overtly kinetic (and experimental) pace? Strike's forced departure foreshadows the sublime ending/trek/dream of 25th HOUR.
"Clockers" is a 1995 Spike Lee joint that focuses on the lower rung connection of the drug trade, connected to the respective street level doing the hustling at the transactional level with the direct user. It is interesting to see a film that dives into this premise, because we tend to get efforts that focus on the drug trade at a higher level with some Cartel driven exposition but when going into the smaller sections on how the illegal industry works at the intimate level between buyer and user, we tend to just get films that dive strictly in iconography of the gangland world and street crime. Drugs are a part of that world, but this film focuses directly on…
Action! - Spike The Power, Lee The Riot'
In an alternate universe, Martin Scorsese would have put aside his passion project Casino and instead teamed up with Harvey Keitel and Richard Price, who previously wrote The Colour of Money. In our reality, however, Martin decided to trust his instincts and give us a film that has become a favorite of many, while Lee in many ways returned to the fray with a film that feels so much like his style.
On the one hand, unlike his many other works that are heavily stylistic, this one felt in many ways like one of his more traditional. Although there is a scene in which Harvey Keitel is giving a speech, and it's…
Thematically similar to Do The Right Thing but nowhere near the strength of message or emotional impact.
The performances were solid though. Keitel and Turturro as detective partners was fun, I wish we had gotten more screentime of the two of them. Delroy Lindo and Mekhi Phifer depict the heart of Spike Lee’s social messages really well.
The soundtrack was great but I didn’t like how it was loudly playing in the background of some scenes in the middle of dialogue. It was so distracting. The score itself sounded similar to most of the scores in Spike Lee’s early work though, had that same soft jazzy vibe to it.
The lighting in the interrogation room scenes was phenomenal though.
Don’t get…
it's summer and we're running out of ice.
brooklyncore, 90s vibe, spike lee & scorsese.
isn't that enough?
Clockers is a Martin Scorsese produced, Spike Lee directed and Richard Price written film that covers a murder from the perspective of drug dealers and police officers. It is a film more about a criminal and police community than the crime. In that, it feels like a proto-The Wire. Or more precisely, a proto-The Corner, David Simon's mini-series from 2000. It has the grim, bleak look at community, socio-economic focus of David Simon's best work. It is no shock that Richard Price went on to work on The Wire, the similarities in the work being self-evident. However, Clockers deserves to be recognised in its own right. It is one of the most underrated films of the '90s, one of the…
If God created anything better than crack cocaine, he kept that shit for hisself. I mean, that shit is like truth serum. It will truly expose who you are. I mean, you happen to be a low-life rat bastard motherfucker, who will sell off his newborn for a suck off that glass dick, crack will bring it right on in the light. Now, I don't care you black, white, Chinese, rich, poor. You take that first hit, you on a mission. And that mission will never end.
The dude just loved his trains! Clockers might just be my favorite Spike Lee joint and also his most underrated in my opinion. A very powerful social commentary wrapped inside what is essentially…
Spike Lee’s Clockers, where hope is barely flickering and rage is perpetually on fire. It is a facsimile of a great film, and I mean that as both a compliment and as a contemptuous criticism. There are expository and structural scenes that occur halfway into the movie that belonged at the beginning – I mean, why delay how tricks of the crack trade go down? Mekhi Phifer is neither an interesting or a disinteresting character as Strike, and deliberately not drawn as a sympathetic character. He’s simply an average misguided soul of the Brooklyn projects who deals black rock like every other black man he knows to survive. Harvey Keitel and John Turturro are on point as detectives long adapted…
"It was a-ight. All right?" -Ronald 'Strike' Dunham
- Spike Lee Ranked: boxd.it/1XDiG
The best part is the Seal focused soundtrack.
I don't know what to say except that it was alright. I feel like it has pacing problems and never succeeds at building tension and creating drama... it just felt like a collection of scenes. Normally when I watch a Spike Lee film I feel like I have trouble keeping up with the emotional pace because everything is so great where here I felt like I was wading through a river of unhurried boredom. Great performances and score, one of Spike's lesser performances in direction though... which still makes it pretty good.
