Themes: Drug Trade, Murder Investigations, Inner City Blues
Main Cast: Harvey Keitel, John Turturro, Delroy Lindo, Mekhi Phifer, Isaiah Washington, Keith David
Release Year: 1995
Country: US
Run Time: 128 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Based on Richard Price's grim best-seller, and directed by Spike Lee from a screenplay co-written with Price, Clockers takes the structure of a police procedural to build a chilling portrait of despair, hope, and the unanswered problem of black-on-black crime in an urban housing project. The film's haunting themes are vividly visualized during the opening credits, which run over police photos of dead young black men, shot and sprawled on sidewalks, in streets, and hanging over fences. Strike (Mekhi Phifer) is a 19-year-old African-American "clocker" -- the lowest link on the drug dealing chain -- who hangs around park benches and street corners selling small amounts of druges at all hours of the day. Strike drinks chocolate milk to soothe an ulcer and plays with model trains in his apartment, dreaming of a way out of his dead-end life. Drug kingpin Rodney (Delroy Lindo) asks Strike to kill another clocker, Darryl, for skimming money, saying that this will be Strike's ticket to a higher post in Rodney's organization. Darryl is indeed shot, and suspicion immediately falls on Strike, but a weary cop named Rocco Klein (Harvey Keitel) thinks there's more to the case. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide
Review
Spike Lee's film adaptation of Richard Price's epic novel on the effects of the crack trade has flashes of the director's characteristic brilliance, but, in its lack of focus and overall familiarity, it falls well short of his best work. A project assumed by Lee after the departure of Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro, its relentless deglamorization of the drug trade suggests that the director was attempting his own Goodfellas (1990). But despite Price's highly tuned ear for the bluster, the edgy evasiveness, and the suicidal delusions of these "clockers," the film often feels like a banal reworking of TV-cop show material, or more accurately, the Warners' socially conscious crime melodramas of the '30s. To his credit, Lee has completely stripped the dealers of the charisma Bogart and Cagney lent to the gangsters in those films, revealing them to be venal, petty, and foolish pawns in a game they must eventually lose. But like Harvey Keitel's enlightened detective, Lee has a measure of compassion for his protagonist Strike (Mekhi Phifer), revealing just how difficult it is for him to extricate himself from a life he begins dimly to grasp as a mistake. It's unfortunate that the dynamics of his relationships with the cops and with the solid citizens struggling for respectability are, at this point, so shopworn. Still, there moments of prime Lee, such as the hallucinatory flashback of Rodney's (Delroy Lindo) first murder, and the editing of the sequence in which Strike describes the virtues of the crack trade to his young protégé. Keitel and Lindo stand out in a cast that is almost uniformly superb, and Terence Blanchard's original, minimalist score is among the film's pleasures. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
Rick Aiello - Cop; Lisa Anderson - Sharon; Michael Badalucco - Cop; Graham Brown - Mr Herman Brown; Paul Calderon - Jesus at Hambones; Michael Cullen - Narc; Frances Foster - Gloria; Ken Garito - Louie; Michael Imperioli - Jo-Jo; Tim Kelleher - Narc; Brendan Kelly - Big Chief; Harry J. Lennix - Bill Walker; Pee Wee Love - Tyrone; J.C. MacKenzie - Frank the Medic; Norman Matlock - Reverend Paul; Anthony Nocerino - Teen; Scot Anthony Robinson - Earl; James Saxenmeyer - EMS Attendant; Maurice Sneed - Davis the Bartender; Mike Starr - Thumper; Regina Taylor - Iris Jeeter; Leonard Thomas - Onion the Bar Patron; Marc Webster - EMS Technician; L.B. Williams - Bike Cop; Ginny Yang - Kiki; Spike Lee - Chucky; Jeff Ward - Bike Cop; Steve White - Darryl Adams; John Fletcher - Al the Medic; Joanna Gardner - Corrections Officer; Paul Schulze - Detective; Hassan Johnson - Skills; E.O. Nolasco - Horace; Ron Brice - Dead Man Begging; Christopher Wynkoop - Detective; Thomas Jefferson Byrd - Errol Barnes; Lawrence B. Adisa
Credit
Ina Mayhew - Art Director, Tom Warren - Supervising Art Director, Robi Reed-Humes - Casting, Richard Price - Co-producer, Ruth E. Carter - Costume Designer, John Lyons - First Assistant Director, Mike Ellis - First Assistant Director, Spike Lee - Director, Sam Pollard - Editor, Rosalie Swedlin - Executive Producer, Terence Blanchard - Composer (Music Score), Terence Blanchard - Songwriter, Diane Hammond - Makeup, Andrew McAlpine - Production Designer, Malik Hassan Sayeed - Cinematographer, Spike Lee - Producer, Monty Ross - Producer, Martin Scorsese - Producer, Jon Kilik - Producer, Skip Lievsay - Set Designer, Steve Kirshoff - Special Effects, Spike Lee - Screenwriter, Richard Price - Screenwriter, Danielle Hollowell - Costumes Assistant, Debra Schutt - Set Decorator, Richard Price - Book Author, Richard Price - Production Secretary
In a Brooklyn housing project, a group of "clockers" - street-level drug dealers - sell drugs for Rodney Little (Delroy Lindo), a local drug lord. Rodney meets with Ronald "Strike" Dunham (Mekhi Phifer), one of his lead clockers and tells him that another dealer, Darryl Adams (Steve White), is stealing from him. Rodney tells Strike that Darryl "got to be got", implying that he wants Strike to kill Darryl. Strike then meets with his brother, Victor Dunham (Isaiah Washington) and tries to persuade Victor to kill Darryl Adams.
Rocco Klein (Harvey Keitel) and Larry Mazilli (John Turturro), homicide detectives, ride to the scene of Darryl Adams' murder. Larry and Rocco receive a phone call from another detective who says a man has confessed at a local church that he killed Darryl. The police meet Strike's older brother Victor at the church and take him in for questioning. In the interrogation room, Victor tells Rocco that he shot Darryl Adams in self-defense. Rocco finds holes in this story and starts looking into Victor's background which includes two jobs, a wife, two children, no criminal record, and aspirations to move out of the projects; Rocco comes to the conclusion that Victor is covering for his younger brother.
Rocco pressures Strike but Victor sticks to his story, so Rocco convinces Rodney that Strike has confessed and flipped on Rodney's drug ring. Rocco arrests Rodney and then humiliates Strike in front of his crew. Strike gets together some money and decides to leave town, but a younger boy who admired Strike shoots Errol, Rodney's enforcer, with Strike's gun. Rocco calls in a social worker for the kid and lets Strike leave town.
Reception
The movie was critically acclaimed by many film critics. Roger Ebert gave the movie a three-and-a-half stars, and it earned a 67% "fresh" rating from Rotten Tomatoes. The movie (along with the novel) would foreshadow similar projects, such as The Wire, for which author/screenwriter Richard Price is also a writer and Fredro Starr and Hassan Johnson cast members.
Film poster
Critics and film buffs were quick to notice that the poster, designed by Art Sims, was similar to Saul Bass' art for Otto Preminger's 1959 film Anatomy of a Murder. Sims claimed that it was a homage, but Bass regarded it as a rip-off.[1]
