Clockers (1995)

Starring: Mekhi Phifer, Harvey Keitel, John Turturro, Delroy Lindo, Keith David, Isaiah Washington, Sticky Fingaz, Fredro Starr, Regina Taylor, Mike Starr, and Spike Lee
Grade: C-

Clockers has some decent moments but if you skipped this, you’re not missing much.

Summary

In the projects over in Brooklyn, New York, we see the chocolate milk loving Strike (Phifer) in a park hanging with his friends and fellow drug dealers, also known as “clockers”. Two of them are Scientific and Go (Onyx members Sticky Fingaz and Fredro Starr). Following a spirited discussion of which rappers are better based off of their connection to the streets, Strike yells at Go to get back into position as a lookout. After a drug deal, a bunch of undercover cops (one of them being Mike Starr) show up and search them all. Their drug lord boss Rodney Little (Lindo) drives by and sees everything happen, making direct eye contact with Strike as it happens. Despite Strike being humiliated in front of the neighborhood by being thoroughly searched, no evidence is found. After the cops leave, Strike clutches his stomach in pain, as he’s been having persistent problems with it.

That night, Strike rides with Rodney. Rodney tells him to see his doctor and insists he stop drinking the milk he’s always sipping on. He then gives him some other liquid useful for stomach pain. Next, he drives Strike over to a restaurant named Ahab’s. Apparently, Darryl Adams, the owner, is stealing from him because he’s not giving up all the money owed from his drug deals. Since Strike wants to move up in Rodney’s tier of dealers, Rodney wants him to kill Darryl. Later that night, Strike gets close to going through with it, but he ends up going to a bar instead. At the bar, Strike sees his good-natured brother Victor (Washington). They talk and Strike brings up how bad of a person Darryl Adams, saying he beat up some 16-year-old girl who wanted a job because she refused to suck his dick. Victor seems locked in because of his drunken state, and even says he knows someone that can kill Darryl. All he needs is the o-k from Strike. Strike cools things down by asking about Victor’s kids. Soon after, Strike goes to Ahab’s but after Darryl makes fun of him, we cut straight to Detectives Rocco Klein (Keitel) and Larry Mazilli (Turturro) driving to a crime scene.

They are called to the scene of Darryl’s death.

Following a conversation with a bystander (Lee), they search the body with other department guys, and they all laugh and joke the entire time. Larry remembers Darryl from Rodney’s candy store, so he and Rocco assume Darryl was a clocker. They find a wad of cash on him that basically confirms it. After they leave, Rocco gets in the way of Strike who’s there observing the scene. Still drinking his chocolate milk, he steps aside for the two of them. On the way to Rodney’s, Strike runs into one of his associates in Errol (Tom Byrd). The creepy Errol decides to bring up how he has AIDS but swears it’s only from needle injection. Afterwards, Strike goes to Rodney’s candy store front. There, Rodney is “inspiring” his new crop of potential young men to join him, with promises of making big money while he gives them advice. He goes outside to talk to Strike and tells him how ecstatic he is that Darryl is dead because this opens Ahab’s to be a huge front for his business. Strike isn’t too happy about the whole thing though.

The next day, Strike is arguing with his friends about his toy train hobby, and a little kid named Tyrone starts laughing as he watches. As Strike tells the kid off, a hardnosed cop named Andre (David) shows up. They all know Andre very well. He’s as straightlaced as they come. He searches Strike and tells all the other guys to knock it off because he knows they’re all clockers. Andre then tells Tyrone to not mess with Strike and the others. Later, Strike befriends Tyrone anyway and suggests he needs a haircut. He drives him around but stops when he sees Victor. He parks the car and goes to talk to him. Sometime after, Tyrone’s mother (Taylor) approaches Strike and the boys angrily because Tyrone now has a shaved head, mirroring Strike’s look. She threatens all of them and warns them she may bring Andre into it. Following this, Victor is brought in for questioning by Rocco and Larry. He admits to killing Darryl. He says he was tired and was drinking. Darryl came up out of nowhere flexing and scared him, so he shot him in self-defense. Meanwhile, Andre sees Tyrone’s cut, his new wardrobe, and how he’s drinking chocolate milk. He knows Strike is influencing him. Because of this, he meets with Strike in the park and threatens him about his friendship with little Tyrone, demanding he never see Tyrone again. He then annoys him about some charity project about getting mattresses for kids, and he wants Strike to sponsor it.

I understand wanting to get good out of bad people, but that last bit felt kind of strange.

Afterwards, he drives Strike home and tries to encourage him to do something else with his life.

Though they have a confession from Victor, something doesn’t sit right with Rocco. Victor is a family man, a church goer, a typical good guy, and an all-around hard worker. He thinks there has to be a better reason as to why he killed Darryl out of the blue. They visit Victor’s family and find out about Strike, the more likely suspect. Tyrone warns Strike about the detectives talking to the family because he talked to them in the elevator. Strike thanks Tyrone and tells him to go back to his mother. Andre shows up and warns him again about hanging with Tyrone, but Strike blames the kid. Then, they discuss Victor and how happy the kids are about the mattresses Strike dropped off. Later on, Rocco continues his investigation with Larry. They go to the bar and get a confirmation from the bartender of Strike and Victor being there the night of the shooting, Victor being a regular customer, and Stike only having one drink. At Rodney’s, Rodney asks why Strike didn’t tell him it was Victor who killed Darryl, but he says Rodney didn’t want to know about it. Technically, this is true, so he drops it. Back at the police department, Rocco comes to his own conclusion that even Larry doesn’t agree with: Victor is covering up for Strike. There’s no way a model citizen like Victor did it. It had to be Strike. He just convinced Victor to do it, so he wouldn’t get in trouble because if Strike got caught, he would be locked up with no questions asked.

Now, Rocco is making it his mission to get Strike to admit to this crime he legitimately didn’t commit.

My Thoughts:

I was not too impressed with Clockers. Though there are a lot of interesting themes explored, the ultimate story just didn’t capture my attention like other Spike Lee projects. For all of the elements that worked, there were enough plot points and character issues to even things out. For starters, I enjoyed the symbolism of the explicit music videos depicting the commercialism of gangster rap and illegal activity, a scene showcasing a Grand Theft Auto-like video game and a young kid like Tyrone being influenced by it, and the pure racism stemming from cops like Rocco and Larry, but there were way too many weird details surrounding these ideas that bogged down the final product. Going along with this, there are a lot of interesting scenes that showcase important topics like murder, temptation, crime in the African American community, how strong influences can change one’s life, drug dealing, opportunities in low-income neighborhoods, and motivations in the police department, and they stay with you. Even so, the topics are merely presented and not fully capitalized on by the time the closing credits come up. Most of it didn’t seem to mix well with the flow of the film or the arc of our main character and story.

Then again, this is just the tip of the iceberg with the movie’s problems.

It starts with Mekhi Pfifer as the star. Yes, he’s the star of the film. All of the promotional material and everything I’ve looked at regarding Clockers lists Harvey Keitel and John Turturro as the stars, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. In terms of importance of characters, both guys are in a tier below Phifer’s Strike and Delroy Lindo’s Rodney. Obviously, the only logical reasoning for this billing issue is because Harvey Keitel is the biggest star in this film, and this is why they marketed it that way. However, if your deciding factor to watch a movie is that Harvey Keitel is in it, then you can fuck right off with that. Clockers is a Spike Lee movie. THAT should be the reason to see it.

Anyway, Pfifer’s performance was noticeably average compared to the rest of the cast. You can see through his drug dealing persona pretty easily. It feels like a performance rather than who Strike the person is. Secondly, there’s these strange characteristics of Strike that I just couldn’t get over. Sure, you want your main character to have some definable traits that set him apart from everyone else, and his intestinal issue was a good start. However, Strike loving chocolate milk and playing with model trains (while trying to act like a tough drug dealer) does not mix at all. There couldn’t be a goofier decision made for an otherwise serious film. It’s even funnier watching him act all tough to Tyrone and everyone in his neighborhood, and then we watch as he goes home and plays with his model train set. I actually laughed out loud a couple of times when he was explaining the history of the train to Tyrone because of how ridiculous the scene felt. You can’t help but laugh because it’s that stupid. I get that Spike doesn’t want the character to be stereotypical to show how you can’t assume anything about someone just because they’re associated with bad people, but has anyone met a drug dealer who plays with model trains and drinks chocolate milk more than he would water or alcohol? Honestly, I don’t think someone like this exists, and I would put money on it. These bizarre details completely distract from some of the finer points Lee is trying to make in this movie.

Now, I’ve seen a lot of Spike Lee films, but I have to admit some symbolism gets lost on me at times. This is why the score baffled me at times. Throughout the course of Clockers, no matter how serious or lighthearted the scene is, there’s this weird commercial-like, instrumental music playing throughout. I can’t be more serious when I say it sounded like a Gatorade advertisement from the 90s. I can’t justify this artistic choice at all. If anything, it gave us more unintentionally comedic moments like when this music is being played as Strike is getting his ass kicked by Andre in the park.

The editing is interesting. Spike adds a lot of elements that make this normal crime drama feel like something memorable from a technical standpoint, and I commend him for that. It’s flashy-looking and very much Spike’s signature style. Unfortunately, the story was more the problem here. There seemed to be a lot of random ideas he wanted to explore in a film that didn’t really allow for it. The opening credits was one example where things worked though. This is where we see pictures from real-life crime scenes of African American citizens murdered, and it’s a memorable way to open the film to prepare us for the story we’re about to watch unfold.

Of all the themes touched on, the takedown of the police was interesting. The frustrating-to-watch Rocco, despite leading the investigation and getting a full confession from Victor, refuses to believe Victor killed someone. Just because of his own personal prejudice and assumptions, he convinces himself this was all Strike’s fault. As the movie goes on, he basically goes out of his way to ruin Strike’s life to the bitter end because he can’t admit he could be wrong and sometimes, good people just have a bad day. We also see Rocco and Larry’s discrimination towards the African American community in their personal conversations and even in front of a fellow African American cop. As a result, you hear them both saying they “mean no disrespect” as they say it. The irony is not lost on us, and it’s good to see how obvious this is for viewers to watch how despicable some of these people in law enforcement can be. The real eye opener was the crime scene of Darryl’s body. In a Quentin Tarantino movie, this scene would’ve been played up comedically and it probably would’ve worked, with all the cops making jokes about the body and messing around like it’s another day at the office, despite the man in front of them being gruesomely murdered. However, Spike Lee handles it in a much different way. Though the script calls for joking between the cops, it comes off as despicable behavior and much more realistic to how one would react watching this in real life rather than in a movie. It was very well crafted and a great way to show how different a scene’s direction could be taken when a different vision is behind the camera.

It’s either that or Harvey Keitel is too good at playing a smug prick. This probably helped too.

John Turturro was just another body on camera existing to have basic conversations with Keitel. If he was somewhat important and paid attention to, Rocco’s motivations for this case would’ve been different, but he ignores whatever Larry suggests. Larry was technically on Strike’s side from the beginning, but no matter how far Rocco goes with his entrapment-related decisions, he just goes along for the ride and does nothing but talk. So, why is he even Rocco’s partner? I guess it’s to make Rocco look more like a dick for his assumptions about Stike, but the fact that Keitel is playing the character is good enough to explain his dick-ish behavior.

Delroy Lindo was very good as Rodney, the charismatic gangster who is able to influence the younger generation to want to be like him in the vein of a commercialized professional athlete. You can see how sly and skilled he is as a talker, playing up his father figure persona with guys like Strike and some of his younger dealers. When you leave out all the violent stuff, making Rodney-like money sounds like a dream come true. This is how he hooks you. He talks as if he wants to avoid violence at all costs. Once he has his claws in you though, the jobs start to get a lot more serious than sitting on park benches. When he flips the switch when things don’t go his way, the real gangster comes out. In the second half of the film, he takes over, and it’s very exciting. Lindo always has a great death stare, but as Rodney, it means something different. You’d expect Strike to try and be the tough kid getting out of control, but if anything, he starts to regress more as things get tougher. Rodney, who starts the film easygoing (and manipulative as a result), turns into a scary figure who’s out to put people’s heads on a platter. If there is one scene I would recommend from an acting perspective, you have to see Rodney point his gun to Strike’s head in the car and hear the conviction in which he speaks. It’s the most all-in I’ve ever seen Delroy Lindo for a singular moment in time. He commands the scene and the latter half of the movie, so when he tells Strike he has no problem killing him, you better believe it.

Now, Strike is scared for his life, and I can’t blame him. Rodney is a bad man.

Also, I’m not sure how these clockers aren’t caught more often. In the opening drug-dealing scene, they looked suspicious as all hell, constantly looking around to see if people are watching them. Later, we see how they have these super obvious signals for each other too. It’s a miracle they haven’t been caught considering they hang out at the exact same spot every day, deal drugs to people, have baseball signals that could easily be deciphered by any undercover cop worth a shit, and every single person and cop in the area knows they are dealing.

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

I don’t understand the ending. Everything that happens is Rocco’s fault. He even lies to make it seem like Strike snitched so Rodney would try to kill him. In turn, this would force Strike to confess for something he didn’t do. Now, his life is threatened, he did literally nothing to deserve it, and Rocco tells him he never wants to see him in this town again. He’s done absolutely nothing, and Rocco knows it! Is he just mad he’s been proven wrong? What was his reasoning? Why the fuck is he acting like Strike is the one that shot Errol in the park? It’s not his fault some dumbass kid stole his gun. The kid even admits it! He even said Strike stopped talking to him. Strike’s brother admitted to killing the other guy too, so why is he being treated like a bag of dogshit? You could say, “Spike is just trying to show that life isn’t fair”, or he’s trying to highlight prejudice, something about corrupt cops, or assuming things based on your past or whatever, but the fact that Strike THANKS him for the ride to Penn Station and for helping him get out of town is such an aggravating way to end such a weird film. He should be motherfucking Rocco for ruining his life! I’m taking legal action at that point. I’m not thanking anyone! Rocco needs to turn in his badge for ruining this many lives in the span of a month! Because of this idiotic ending with the lack of explanation and Strike’s “thankfulness” for whatever reason, our protagonist comes off looking like an absolute moron and everyone else looks like a villain or a flat-out dipshit (I’m looking at you Andre!).

What’s even more maddening is that they had a chance to explain these final moments easily. Strike literally asks Rocco, “What made you give a shit?”. What does Rocco say, you ask? Nothing. He has no answer and tells him to leave. What?! Then, what was the point of all of this? You have nothing? This is the only question we needed answered in the entire movie, and they can’t give it to us? What a crock of shit.

Ultimately, Clockers is one of the more forgettable films in Spike’s catalogue of movies. It’s not bad, but it’s not compelling enough to where I’d watch it again. Plus, there are so many infuriating things that go on, you start to forget about the good stuff. By the end of the film, the characters come to the conclusion that the guy that said he was guilty, was in fact guilty. The only thing that changed was that an “innocent” drug dealer was forced to move out of town after all of this. This movie gets more and more annoying when you think about it. Am I supposed to be happy, sad, or should I stand up and yell, “Fuck the system!”?

It’s probably the latter, but many other filmmakers have done this message better with other films. Hell, Spike Lee has even done it better before.