Clockers: Critic Reviews

Lee captures the despair, self-delusion, occasional terror and frequent humor of a praised and popular novel, aided by the potent acting his direction virtually guarantees.

A real, wicked thrill.

What we get mostly in the film is a sense of Lee flailing, struggling to get a handle on his material.

Although Clockers is, as I suggested, a murder mystery, in solving its murder, it doesn't even begin to find a solution to the system that led to the murder. That is the point.

The performances are strong, but the spectator often feels adrift in an overly busy intrigue.

A study of the urban dope-dealing culture and its toll on everyone who comes in contact with it, the picture has an insider's feel that is constantly undercut by the filmmaker's impulse to editorialize.

Clockers uses unexpected narrative turns to accentuate the themes of lost innocence and uncultivated potential, and affirms that tragic melodrama is not a prerequisite for emotional impact.

There is a force and focus in Lee's work, an absence of intellectual posturing and a willingness to let his material speak for itself that he has not achieved before.

Clockers thunders home with the bruising urgency of a story that needs to be told.

Helping make these points is as strong a cast as Lee has yet worked with.

Lee's film never recaptures the impact of the opening credit sequence, a grimly deglamorized tableaux of real-life crime scenes.

Average Lee, but still enjoyable overall.

Arguably Lee's best film since Do The Right Thing.

Spike Lee gets a good perfromance from newcomer Phifer as the young crack dealer, but the movie is diffuse, paying too much attention to the urban environment and not enough to the personas and dilemmas of the central characters.

Clockers is messy and didactic, but it's complex in a way that a tidy film can't be.

The result is a more sober, mournful and meditative expressionism than you'd expect. That's not to say the film isn't suspenseful, but the director's distaste for the inner city's gun culture is clear to see. Superbly acted.

A fascinating and engrossing character study.

Sub-par Spike Lee

One of the best films of the 90's....a knockout

Decent urban drama.

A trilha sonora intrusiva acaba cansando, mas o filme se sobressai gracas a complexidade de seus personagens.