Young drug pushers in the projects of Brooklyn live hard dangerous lives, trapped between their drug bosses and the detectives out to stop them.
Writer/Director: Spike Lee
Writers: Richard Price (book) & (screenplay)
Stars: Harvey Keitel, John Turturro, Delroy Lindo.
This is another good film, I just don't like it.
The topic is urban violence, not just related to drugs.
This definitely does not glorify gangsters or violence. I doubt that it would discourage it among the people living in its midst, because it offers no solution(s).
So we get the usual SL treatment, laying down a mosaic of details in the lives of our characters, not hitting us on the head with the destination. And then it becomes clear, and the climax makes the details worthwhile, and gives something to think about.We did get a "happy" ending, which did not feel like a cop-out. It also didn't feel very permanent.
Google search for "clocker" yields "a drug dealer, especially one who sells cocaine or crack," and the Urban Dictionary has an entry that attributes it to this book. Wikipedia has several other disambiguations, but the primary, about timing racehorses, is irrelevant to this film.
IMDb trivia: "Was originally supposed to be directed by Martin Scorsese. Rocco Klein would have been the main character, played by Robert De Niro. Scorsese changed his mind, opting instead to direct Casino (1995), and De Niro went with him. Scorsese then asked Spike Lee if he wanted to direct. Lee accepted (and decided that Strike, not Rocco, would be the primary character), and Scorsese was given an "Executive Producer" credit."
BTW, I contributed a Connection to this poster before reading the following IMDb trivia item: "The film's poster, designed by Art Sims, is an homage to the poster for Anatomy of a Murder (1959) which was designed by Saul Bass. Bass was not pleased with the poster and stated in an interview "when anyone steals something, they call it an 'homage'"." That film is from a different studio (Columbia) than this one. And the films are not similar in the least. Clockers has no humor that I got, and violence abounds (but perhaps not so much as the opening montage makes you feel), although each has a killing supposedly motivated by rape, but Clockers merely mentions that. Both have a dark jazz music score, but Anatomy's was by Duke Ellington. Clockers' has various song writers, and some of the songs are hip-hop/rap.This is not the only Otto Preminger film from which SL "borrowed" a poster image. Observe the pair here.
Universal & more, dir. Lee; 6-
