Some of the movie’s most harrowing scenes show cops hardened by a beat where drugs and death are the daily routine (…). They joke to separate themselves from the finality of death. In a society set up around drugs and guns, it is impossible to care about every single life that is lost; the system is diseased, and one can only hope not to die from it (…). Yet Clockers is not a shriek of despair. Lee finds poetry and humor in all of his stories. –– Roger Ebert