In his films 25th Hour and Do the Right Thing Spike Lee uses New York both as a theme and a foundation for the visual structure of the film. In both cases, Lee relies on the cosmopolitan mosaic of New York to dramatize a series of inter-connected characters, much the way he seems to view New York as a place of interconnected characters.
In the film 25th Hour, Spike Lee uses New York as both background and character. Perhaps one could argue the city serves as a background character, a sort of extra floating around the set. The film is about a convicted drug dealer saying his good-byes the day before he is about to head to prison for a seven-year sentence. As A.O. Scott notes in his review of the film, the story is based on a novel by David Benioff, who also wrote the screenplay. The book was written and published well before the attacks of September 11th. References to the attack in the film, therefore, are original to the film.
The film begins with Montgomery "Monty" Brogan saving a dying dog on a street with the Brooklyn Bridge as the backdrop. This visual, therefore, ties the city and the character together in the story. However, the film next runs the opening credit sequence, which begins with a shot of New York skyscraper lit with brilliant light from above. Following shots show the "twin towers" of light used to represent the spot where the Twin Towers stood before they were decimated in the 9/11 attacks. The film, therefore, not so much as the story, sets up that this is a film set in New York after the 9/11 attacks.
Lee engineers several other scenes that tie the story explicitly to the attacks. For example, Monty's father, a former firefighter, owns a bar that has posted tributes to other firefighters who died in the attacks. Monty and his father have a brief conversation about one particular firefighter that Monty went to school with. But perhaps the most visually explicit scene takes place when Monty's friends, Frank...