Spike Lee seemed to make a lot of clunkers around the turn of the century and oh boy is this one of them. The backdrop of New York City in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks only serves to trivialize the movie's core drama about a white guy going to prison for drug posession.
I haven't seen very many Spike Lee films, but having really liked Do the Right Thing and Blackkklansman, it just seems that the further away you can get from the early 2000's the better.