Fiction into Film-The 25^th Hour

Tuesday, April 21

6 PM

Downtown Library

413 SE 4th

If the subject demands intensity, it should get intensity. -David Benioff, City of Thieves

All Monty Brogan ever really wanted when he grew up was to be a fireman. Now he's about to start a seven-year stretch in the federal penitentiary for drug dealing. With just twenty-four hours of freedom to go, he prowls the city with his girlfriend and his two best friends from high school-a high-flying bond trader and an idealistic teacher. As the minutes count down, Monty seizes one last chance to stack the odds in his favor.    Hurtling from the money pits of Wall Street to Manhattan's downtown lounge and club scene, from the enclaves of the Russian mob to the old immigrant neighborhoods, The 25th Hour evokes the pulsing rhythms and diamond-hard edges of a city in the raw, illusory hours between midnight and dawn.

As a novel, the San Francisco Chronicle says David Benioff's first book "couldn't get much better."  As a film, Rolling Stone calls it "riveting," and says director Spike Lee "still manages to do the right thing by trusting the wildly ambitious script that David Benioff has adapted from his own novel."