'25TH HOUR' TRIES TO PULL US INTO DRUG DEALER'S CAMP.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

IN THE PROLOGUE to ``The 25th Hour,'' Edward Norton's New York drug dealer Monty Brogan proves he's really a good guy by stopping on the way to a meeting with his Russian mob boss to help a battered and not very friendly dog.

When the film proper gets under way, it's some time later. In fact, we soon learn, Monty has been betrayed, busted and sentenced to hard time at an upstate prison in the interim. It's his last day of freedom before he has to turn himself in and, understandably, he has a lot of concerns. But he's still worried about the dog, which he has adopted as his own, and therefore he's an even better guy than we initially thought.

There is more to like about him, too - including the fact that Norton plays Monty with generally more gravitas (and less nasality) than he's given us in recent years. But like a dog's slobbering kiss, special pleading drips gooishly all over this attempt to show us that middle-class pushers are really no more criminal than you or I - even if they have sold a few bad hits in their careers and their associates shoot people.

For a Spike Lee movie, it must be said, the basic premise - that if the government didn't foolishly criminalize narcotics, guys like Monty would not be criminals - is not forced up our nostrils. Lee has other polemical fish to fry - for no good reason except that the director is a New Yorker and, well, is Spike: His rants about every post-Sept. 11 issue that could possibly be crammed into the piece are distractingly deployed, as is a condensed screed that encapsulates all the social anger that was relevant to his masterpiece, ``Do the Right Thing,'' but has little business being here.

The movie's bigger problem, besides the sympathy-for-the-devil deck stacking at the core of David Benioof's script (which he adapted from his novel), is that the whole thing degenerates into a kind of male-bonding soap opera. There are terrific actor moments scattered throughout, but the guyish blubbery goes on far too long - and just plain too far, past any necessity.

Though parties are planned and the many people who like Monty for the nice if misguided guy he is all want to show him one last good time (even the head Russian, after deciding he can trust the fall guy enough not to kill him), he's just interested in making sure the people he cares about do things that he cares about.

Two childhood friends, a vulgar Wall Street go-getter (Barry Pepper) and a nervous, sexually frustrated prep-school teacher (Philip Seymour Hoffman), vow to keep things light for their bud's sake and, predictably, fail miserably at the task. Monty's girlfriend Naturelle (Rosario Dawson), whom he suspects of turning him in to the cops, has to be brave in a number of ways - losing him means many things to the character, some of which she doesn't seem to have considered until his accusatory friends bring them to her attention.

And then there's dear old Dad (Brian Cox, taking time off from every other movie he's appeared in this year), a bar-owning Irish widower whose own failings drove his loving son into the illicit drug trade or something. See, it's not really Monty's fault ...

Anna Paquin serves Lolita duty rather shrilly, and Tony Siragusa does a creditable Ukrainian heavy (in every sense of the word) for a football player. The whole thing is as serious as a night of partying can get, yet it fails in the end to be taken very seriously at all.

25TH HOUR - Two and one half stars

(R: violence, language, drugs)

Starring: Edward Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Pepper, Rosario Dawson, Anna Paquin, Brian Cox.

Director: Spike Lee.

Running time: 2 hr. 12 min.

Playing: ArcLight, Hollywood; Century 14, Century City.

In a nutshell: Male weepie in which Norton's nailed drug dealer spends his last night before prison trying to come to terms with those he loves. Humanizing in places, maudlin in others, the film's agenda of sympathy for a big-time pusher just doesn't wash.

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Photo:

In his final day before going to prison, drug dealer Monty Brogan's (Edward Norton) activities include checking up on a battered dog.