I am not a big fan of Spike Lee, and "Clockers" did not turn me into a fan. But I was a huge admirer of the original novel version of "Clockers", and I was pretty sure I could depend on a person with Lee's talents to do justice to the story. So I made sure to see this film within a couple of days of its initial release. Well, Lee took some shortcuts along the way, and I am not sure if the choices he made were the best, but the results are quite affecting.
When I say that Lee's version of "Clockers" takes only half of the novel, I mean that what we see in the movie version is essentially the "black" side of the story. The investigating detective, played by Harvey Keitel, is reduced to a cipher, a straight-arrow Joe Friday type who is only there to show the 'police procedural' part of the dynamics between the police and the drug dealers to control the neighborhood. In the book, the reader comes to know the cops - ALL the cops, not just Keitel's character - as well as Strike and the dealers and the denizens of the neighborhood. Lee chooses to omit this entire aspect of the story, which is a shame, because the most powerful part of "Clockers"-the-novel is the way it presents the whole picture of life in a ghetto/projects area.
But Lee chooses to stick with Strike and his world. I believe this was done to help Lee focus more on issues in the black community that he is most interested in, and which (in the days before the rise of 'gangsta' culture, hip-hop, and the rise of authors such as George Pelecanos and Don Goines) were (and maybe still are) severely underrepresented in mainstream cinema.
And the results are still very effective. The relationship and the exchanges between Strike and his mentor (played with ferocious effectiveness by Delroy Lindo) came across on film exactly the way I'd pictured it from the book, the interiors of the bars, the squalor and graffiti in the projects, the aimlessness of some of the 'lesser lights' in the neighborhood - people who you knew would never escape...all this came across perfectly. The young actor who played "Strike" has just the right blend of nervous energy, youthful charisma and doomed resignation, and I keep looking for him in other roles to see what else he can do.
One major complaint - at the end, Lee pulls a big cheat, by substituting a 'virtual reality' shooting game for the complex web of emotions, anger and conflict that drive a juvenile to ruin his life by shooting down a dealer. This runs counter to the whole message of the film with its lazy substitution of 'video games cheapen the value of life' versus the message of the entire rest of the film that 'racism, drugs, and poverty cheapen life'. I was very disappointed with this blatant cop out, and that knocks a star or two off the final rating.
And I am still not a Spike Lee fan. But this was a good adaptation of a very challenging story.
When I say that Lee's version of "Clockers" takes only half of the novel, I mean that what we see in the movie version is essentially the "black" side of the story. The investigating detective, played by Harvey Keitel, is reduced to a cipher, a straight-arrow Joe Friday type who is only there to show the 'police procedural' part of the dynamics between the police and the drug dealers to control the neighborhood. In the book, the reader comes to know the cops - ALL the cops, not just Keitel's character - as well as Strike and the dealers and the denizens of the neighborhood. Lee chooses to omit this entire aspect of the story, which is a shame, because the most powerful part of "Clockers"-the-novel is the way it presents the whole picture of life in a ghetto/projects area.
But Lee chooses to stick with Strike and his world. I believe this was done to help Lee focus more on issues in the black community that he is most interested in, and which (in the days before the rise of 'gangsta' culture, hip-hop, and the rise of authors such as George Pelecanos and Don Goines) were (and maybe still are) severely underrepresented in mainstream cinema.
And the results are still very effective. The relationship and the exchanges between Strike and his mentor (played with ferocious effectiveness by Delroy Lindo) came across on film exactly the way I'd pictured it from the book, the interiors of the bars, the squalor and graffiti in the projects, the aimlessness of some of the 'lesser lights' in the neighborhood - people who you knew would never escape...all this came across perfectly. The young actor who played "Strike" has just the right blend of nervous energy, youthful charisma and doomed resignation, and I keep looking for him in other roles to see what else he can do.
One major complaint - at the end, Lee pulls a big cheat, by substituting a 'virtual reality' shooting game for the complex web of emotions, anger and conflict that drive a juvenile to ruin his life by shooting down a dealer. This runs counter to the whole message of the film with its lazy substitution of 'video games cheapen the value of life' versus the message of the entire rest of the film that 'racism, drugs, and poverty cheapen life'. I was very disappointed with this blatant cop out, and that knocks a star or two off the final rating.
And I am still not a Spike Lee fan. But this was a good adaptation of a very challenging story.