Ronnie Dunham (Mekhi Phifer) is a misguided young man who somehow lost his way years before, and found himself under the control of Rodney (Delroy Lindo), a kindly shop owner who is also a fearsome drug kingpin, supplying crack cocaine to the residents of the nearby Brooklyn projects. He employs Ronnie, who adopts the street name “Strike”, to be one of his “clockers”, a low-level street dealer who does the dirty work while Rodney rakes in the benefits, while evading the law through his standing as one of the community’s most beloved figures based on his reputation and willingness to take troubled youth under his wing, secretly corrupting them in the process. Strike is tasked with a challenge – Rodney instructs him to kill another young man who has apparently been stealing from him. Conflicted, Strike tries to convince his brother, Victor (Isaiah Washington) to do the hit for him instead, and plead self-defence if (or rather, when) he was caught. The specifics of the murder aren’t clear immediately, which is what hardworking homicide detective Rocco Klein (Harvey Keitel) and his flippant partner, Larry Mazilli (John Turturro) are assigned to figure out. Immersing themselves within the community, they investigate the murder, and even when Victor comes forward and confesses that he’s responsible for the murder, Klein is reluctant to accept it, since he believes that such an upstanding, decent member of society would never dare commit such a heinous act, believing that he’s only covering for his troubled younger brother. The stories interweave while both sides of the law try and find answers, which becomes increasingly difficult the closer they come to each other, as this turns out to not be a particularly easy case to solve, mainly considering the personal bonds that exist between those involved in these shady dealings, and the people pursuing them.

Spike Lee has always made fascinating films throughout his career, which has seen him direct incredible pieces over his four-decades of working in the industry. Many would consider his most interesting period to be the 1990s, as it starts with his bold social epics and biopics such as Mo’ Better Blues and Malcolm X on one end, and fascinating character studies such as Summer of Sam and He Got Game on the other. Sitting squarely in the middle is Clockers, an adaptation of the Richard Price novel, which Lee took the reigns of after his friend and mentor Martin Scorsese had to depart the film. Clockers isn’t a film that is normally used in reference to Lee’s immense directorial prowess, which is certainly understandable – the film often feels detached from the stories Lee was passionate about and doesn’t always lend itself to his distinctive style – yet, it has many of the same qualities that the director has brought to his passion projects, which sometimes conflict with Price’s story, resulting in a film that feels as if someone was doing a homage to Lee, rather than this being a project of the director himself. However, considering that he’s rarely made a bad film, and even his failures tend to be relatively noble in some way, Clockers is still a worthwhile entry from a filmmaker whose keen sense of understanding the world around him, and the multitude of stories and experiences that are harboured in each individual, makes for truly compelling cinema. It may pale in comparison to some of the director’s more notable works, but below the sometimes stifling subject matter, there’s a remarkably powerful social drama that is just as intricate and rage-fueled as anything Lee has made before or after this, compensating for some of the minor flaws that persist throughout this otherwise fascinating, but truly harrowing, look into the human condition from the perspective of two conflicting subjects of the population.

A director of immense versatility and undying devotion to his stories, regardless of their underlying themes, Spike Lee’s films often convey a sense of anger that is rarely found with either the consistency or intensity in other filmmakers of his generation. They are also films that effectively employ a rage that intentionally avoids subtlety – there aren’t many filmmakers who are able to explore such intense material with such brutal honesty without causing some form of controversy – and for this reason alone, Lee was the best candidate to shepherd Price’s harrowing story of low-level drug dealers in working-class Brooklyn. Not only does he possess the skills in tackling such a sensitive exploration of race-related issues, but also the inborn talent to put together something that conveys a message without being overwrought, while still making use of the inherent fury that motivates some of the film’s most indelible images, and moments that are not soon to be forgotten by any viewer who ventures into this terrifying social drama that sees the director making one of his most gritty, uncompromisingly bleak films to date. The subversive humour and immense warmth that often pervades his films are mostly missing in Clockers, replaced with a haunting approach to life in the projects, from the perspective of various individuals who all find their lives intersecting as a result of a poor decision on the part of one man who decided to assert his authority, without ever considering that he may need to pay the consequences. It’s an intrepid approach to a film that benefits massively from Lee’s endless talents, and incredible ability to channel the anger that often motivates these incredibly powerful films into something astonishingly powerful, and makes Clockers one of his more daring explorations of themes he has often touched upon many times in his work.

Another area in which Lee massively thrives is in how he refuses to provide overt explanations for what we are seeing – the story he intends to tell is always sufficient when contrasted with the accompanying images, therefore removing the need to explain everything that the audience is presented with. This is very true for Clockers, which is a film that is composed of many different narrative threads, which all come together to form a lucid tapestry centred around one particular event, and the various perspectives that are used to explore a crime after it has occurred. Lee doesn’t need to tell us that racism is bad, or that murder is a crime, but rather uses these assumptions that any logical viewer will bring to the film as a launching pad for his powerful investigation into these issues, allowing him to provide depth and nuance to a story required both the sensitivity and apoplectic despair that Lee often brings to these films that tend to be focused on the similar thematic territory, while always providing something new, rather than reiterating what was said before. This allows every film, regardless of the specific story (with several of them crossing over in terms of the concepts they are composed of), to be thoroughly unique and captivating, even when we think that Lee is heading in the same direction as he did before. The anger in Clockers is very different to the kind he used to build Do the Right Thing or Malcolm X or Jungle Fever, or any of his other films that look at issues of race and social inequality, each one of these films contributing something new to the discourse while remaining exceptional works that stand as insular masterpieces in their own right.

Prior to making Clockers, Lee directed Crooklyn, which is perhaps his most personal film, a semi-autobiographical story of his upbringing in the Bed-Stuy neighbourhood of Brooklyn, and functioning as a loving ode to his mother. Clockers, while not as directly influenced by his own life, works as a great companion piece to this film, mainly in how, below the violence and social anarchy, this is a film about fatherhood and paternal figures. Every major character in this film is presented as either a lost youth looking for guidance or a figure that helps them find their footing and setting them on their way. This compels Lee to cast some of his regular collaborators, as well as some newcomers, all of which are incredible in working through these complex themes, working on both the broader scale of the crime story and the more intimate intricacies of the social message underlying the film. Mekhi Phifer is the anchor of the film, a young man who has not known anything other than the street – and on one side, he is manipulated by Rodney, who stands as his paternal figure and compels him to engage in these sordid activities, and on the other by Detective Klein, who tries to convince him to stay on the straight-and-narrow, or risk being put away forever. Phifer leads this film with an incredible sincerity, but its Delroy Lindo and Harvey Keitel that leave the most indelible impression with their wonderful, contrastive performances. Lindo, one of the most reliable character actors working today, is a compelling villain, a man who embodies warmth and care, which is contradicted by his underlying malice – the actor’s deft ability to go from caring to completely unhinged in less than a moment is truly terrifying, especially in terms of how the film explores his relationship with Strike. Keitel, on the other hand, brings a depth to the archetype of the honest cop who is willing to do anything to get answers, except for take a single person for granted. There’s a lot of heart to these performances, which complements the bleak story. No one other than Lee could derive such incredibly nuanced performances in a film as harrowing as this, which is a testament to him as both a director and as a person who always seeks out a deeper meaning to the relationships he portrays on screen.

One of his more violent films, not only in terms of the imagery, but in the underlying story, Clockers is an immensely disturbing film, and Lee never feels compelled to sanitize it in any way, instead going the opposite direction and confronting viewers with the truth of the situation – the opening credits are composed of a series of photographs of young black men gunned down in Brooklyn over the years, accompanied by a melancholy but upbeat song. The constant referral to victims of this violence as “just another stain on the sidewalk” indicates that Lee isn’t interested in providing a happy ending, but rather alarming viewers to the truth of a particular situation. Clockers is a very stark film and one that refuses to play by the rules, for fear of coming across as sentimental. There are moments of warmth throughout this film, but none that could be considered as excusing the behaviour we’re presented with on screen – Lee makes sure to keep the touching moments intact but surrounding them with bleak social commentary, as a way of reminding the audience that hope exists in a difficult situation, but it doesn’t invalidate the struggle many go through. Clockers focuses on survival, and as a result never presents any of these characters as archetypes – even the police officers who privately feel nothing but umbrage to this community treats them with some kind of respect, understanding the delicate balance that could cause uncontrollable anarchy if tipped even slightly on one side. Ultimately, as we’ve seen in Do the Right Thing, only the smallest incident against the status quo could change everything and cause the complete annihilation of both tangible and abstract property – but perhaps that’s exactly the point.