`Clockers' Faces America's Nightmare Of Drugs, Death

----------------------------------------------------------------- Movie review

XXX 1/2 "Clockers," with Harvey Keitel, Mekhi Phifer, Delroy Lindo, Isaiah Washington, John Turturro, Keith David, Regina Taylor. Directed by Spike Lee, from a screenplay by Richard Price and Spike Lee, based on the novel by Richard Price. Alderwood, Aurora, Crossroads, Everett 9, Factoria, Gateway, Lewis & Clark, Metro, Mountlake 9, Newmark."R" - Restricted, due to violence, profanity, substance abuse. -----------------------------------------------------------------

In photos taken from actual police files, the shooting victims lie or sag in positions that no living body could comfortably assume. Blood is everywhere, leaking from bullet holes that drill through foreheads or blast out chunks of flesh and bone. Of a dozen or so of these grotesque images, all of the dead are African American, and not one of them appears to be over the age of 30.

As these images accompany the opening credits of "Clockers," it appears as if Spike Lee will be indulging his proven capacity for in-your-face filmmaking. Some will consider leaving the theater, if they don't actually leave. But while "Clockers" is not excessively violent by today's extreme standards, the title sequence makes one point achingly clear: This may be a fictional movie based on Richard Price's bestselling novel, but its drama is terribly real, and it's happening every single day.

"It" is the nightmare of drugs and death in America, and how both are inextricably entwined. In "Clockers," the dealer of death is Strike (fantastic newcomer Mekhi Phifer), a black teen who avoids his product (he'd rather finance his model train hobby) but pays the price for crime with a bleeding ulcer and daily shakedowns by the local cops.

Strike is a chosen "son" of Rodney (Delroy Lindo), a big-time supplier of crack cocaine who uses his tiny Brooklyn store as a front for his dealership. He grooms kids for his trade, just as Strike shows Tyrone (Pee Wee Love) how cocaine equals survival in a world of vanishing options.

Homicide detective Rocco Klein (Harvey Keitel) is convinced that Strike killed a fast-food manager, but his partner Mazilli (John Turturro) is eager to believe Strike's brother Victor (Isaiah Washington), who has confessed to the crime despite being a conspicuously unlikely suspect.

That's the mystery that gives "Clockers" its momentum, but Lee uses it to explore, with documentary urgency, the conditions - and the frightening leaps of logic - that lead young black males to deal drugs as a defense against inner-city hopelessness.

It doesn't always hold together. As dealers signal for a transaction like baseball coaches, Lee and cinematographer Malik Hassan Sayeed shoot like movie guerrillas, blending a dozen visual approaches into a maelstrom of self-indulgent style. But there is an ultimate consistency to this strategy (unlike the migraine-inducing "Natural Born Killers"), and Lee's visuals become a vital element to the assembly of a criminal puzzle.

One viewing may leave the viewer underwhelmed; I had the luxury of a second viewing and "Clockers" came vividly to life. Although a few characters (particularly Turturro's) lose their full dimension, the events and essence of Price's novel are intact, and if "Clockers" never throttles as a full-speed thriller, Lee is powerfully successful in exposing the gut-wrenching victims of drugs and the predators who thrive on human weakness.

Some have criticized Lee for stepping lightly over the issue; one look at the walking dead who consume crack in a seemingly authentic montage is enough to prove otherwise. Rather than rub our faces in it, Lee points to the reality as an aftershock of his central drama, which simmers for 90 minutes before boiling over with the controlled explosion of Keitel's performance.

The others are equally powerful. Phifer is a revelation, never for one moment appearing to be acting at all; he is Strike, and Lindo turns Rodney into a fierce surrogate father who could, without warning, kill his "children" as a fatal act of discipline.

But "Clockers" is finally about far more than fine acting. Vivid, harsh and (in Strike's unspoken cry for "Mommy!") tragically heartbreaking, the film somehow manages to suggest that there is a possible waking from this nightmare, at least on an individual level. On the larger scale, however, the body count continues to rise.