25th Hour | Kitty Kiernans, Bay Ridge — The Mirror in Brogan's Bar

Brogan's is where the father waits. James Brogan pours drinks in a Brooklyn pub while his son burns down the last day of his freedom, and it is here, in the bathroom, that Monty finds two words scrawled across the mirror: FUCK YOU. What follows is the most famous three minutes Edward Norton has ever played — a rolling curse aimed at every group in New York, at the bankers and the cabbies and the cops and the priests, at the city itself, and finally, in the glass, at the only person actually responsible for where he is going.

The pub is Kitty Kiernans at 9715 Third Avenue in Bay Ridge, down near Fort Hamilton where Brooklyn runs out of room before the Narrows. It is still a working neighbourhood bar, not a set: taps, a back room, regulars who know each other by name. Third Avenue here is low-rise and unglamorous — awnings, storefronts, a corner deli, the ramps of the Verrazzano a few blocks south.

Order something, then go and look at the mirror. There will be no graffiti on it. The scene lands anyway, because this is exactly the kind of room where a man's father would still be standing behind the taps at closing time, wiping down a bar for a son who did not deserve him.