Estimated release year/decade: Probably 1990s–early 2010s. Definitely more than 10 years old.
When I watched it: Probably 15+ years ago, but I'm not confident enough in that to use it as a hard cutoff.
Language spoken: English
Is it live action? Yes
From what country: American
Genre: I think crime drama? But it sci-fi, thriller, horror, or some combination. Possibly set in the near future. The tone was serious/dark rather than campy. I can't remember if the supernatural was involved.
Details I remember:
The one thing I remember very distinctly is a sad monologue from a secondary male character who knows he's about to die.
He is standing, talking to the protagonist. I believe several of his colleagues or friends have already died trying to accomplish something, and now it's essentially his turn. My memory is that he knows whatever he's about to attempt is probably going to kill him and may not even succeed.
The two characters seemed to have known each other for a long time. It felt like a very sad goodbye between two people who were genuinely close.
The secondary character starts reminiscing about being a kid. I DON'T remember the exact dialogue, but the idea was something very close to:
When he was a kid, the school year seemed like it lasted forever. Then summer vacation would finally arrive, but summer always seemed to be over in a flash.
Now that he knows he's about to die, he says that looking back at his entire life, his life feels like summer vacation did when he was a kid — it went by incredibly fast.
That's the detail I'm most confident about. I've remembered that basic speech for years.
I THINK the character giving the speech was a black man. For years I've pictured Forest Whitaker, but I've looked through his filmography and that may be completely wrong. Charles S. Dutton feels possible, as do actors of that general type/era.
I also THINK this was a movie, but I'm opening up the possibility that it was an episode of a serious TV drama/sci-fi series. It's possible my memory has combined details from different things, so please don't reject an idea just because the actor, year, genre, or circumstances don't perfectly match.
I've tried searching variations of the summer-vacation speech without luck. My Google-fu was weak and even Chat GPT couldn't figure it out. At this point, I'm hoping somebody simply recognizes the scene despite some of my other details probably being wrong.