{"id":13768,"date":"2020-09-26T22:00:02","date_gmt":"2020-09-27T02:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=13768"},"modified":"2020-09-26T20:52:45","modified_gmt":"2020-09-27T00:52:45","slug":"clockers-1995-spike-lee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/13768","title":{"rendered":"Clockers (1995, Spike Lee)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The lead cops, whose casting may be holdovers from when this was first planned as a Martin Scorsese picture, get first billing, but the film belongs to Mekhi Phifer as Strike, sort of the D&#8217;Angelo Barksdale of this story.  He&#8217;s a mid-level drug dude with a stern and intense boss (Delroy Lindo) whose heart (and stomach) isn&#8217;t in his work.  The poor guy either executes a rival or guilts his brother into doing it, and he&#8217;s such a harmless dude that even the cops help him get away in the end.  Whoever called this a trial run for <em>25th Hour<\/em> nailed it.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image20\/clockers2.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p><em>Keitel and &#8220;Chucky&#8221;:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image20\/clockers1.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Strike tries to get himself a protegee named Tyrone, but keeps getting yelled at by Tyrone&#8217;s mom.  Some Spike Lee weirdness keeps you on your toes &#8211; the climactic murder by Tyrone is foreshadowed in a VR game, and what was up with that &#8220;No More Packing&#8221; billboard with the gun in a lunchbox?  Best of all is when Harvey Keitel, terrible at his job, is telling Tyrone what he should say to get off for the killing, appearing by the kid&#8217;s side in alternate-flashback versions of the events.<\/p>\n<p><em>Showdown:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image20\/clockers3.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image20\/clockers4.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Somebody was not careful when writing character names &#8211; with only a few lead roles, why would you name four of them Ronny and Rodney, Errol and Darryl?  Also funny to hear an interviewee correct the cops&#8217; pronunciation of his name &#8220;Jesus,&#8221; with John Turturro standing right behind him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The lead cops, whose casting may be holdovers from when this was first planned as a Martin Scorsese picture, get first billing, but the film belongs to Mekhi Phifer as Strike, sort of the D&#8217;Angelo Barksdale of this story. He&#8217;s a mid-level drug dude with a stern and intense boss (Delroy Lindo) whose heart (and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[451,2688,136,829,913,359,294],"class_list":["post-13768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1990s","tag-delroy-lindo","tag-drugs","tag-harvey-keitel","tag-john-turturro","tag-spike-lee","tag-trains"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13768"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13786,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13768\/revisions\/13786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}