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All Movie Info
Starring:
Spike Lee, Danny Aiello, Richard Edson, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn, John Turturro, John Savage, Rosie Perez, Frankie Faison
Directed By:
Spike Lee
Written By:
Spike Lee
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Do the Right Thing (1989)
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Movie Review by Jarrod 
July 13th, 2008
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'Do the Right Thing' is Spike Lee's masterpiece, and a key contribution to American cinema. This is a bold and provocative film about racial issues, which it addresses frankly and impolitely, the language is often vicious and unflattering, and the climax involves a riot that follows an act of police brutality that leaves a young black man dead. There are multiple communities sharing a neighborhood in Brooklyn; blacks comprise the majority of the population, with Hispanics as the second largest group. There is a Korean family that owns a store on the corner, and an Italian named Sal (Danny Aiello), who runs a pizza parlor with his two sons, Pino (John Turturro) and Vito (Richard Edson). Mookie (Spike Lee) is Sal's delivery boy. He lives with his sister Jade (Joie Lee), who is pestered by his irresponsible nature; he takes long breaks from work and Sal never fires him, for which he should be grateful. Mookie has a girlfriend, Tina (Rosie Perez), and together, they have a son, named Hector. Tina thinks Mookie is a lousy father, which he is, but there is evidence to suggest that he loves them both. Da Mayor (Ossie Davis) wanders the streets, usually inebriated, but he is old and wise, and tries to keep the peace when things get out of hand. He displays some affection for Mother Sister (Ruby Dee, Davis's wife), who tends to regard him with distaste, but is secretly charmed by him. Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) walks around with boombox blaring, and is intensely possessive of it. The curiously named Buggin Out (Giancarlo Esposito) is an obnoxious moron who is largely ignored by everyone else. He has a problem with Sal's pizzeria having only pictures of Italian-Americans on his wall; he demands that Sal put up some photos of famous black people, and Sal refuses.
Buggin Out seeks to boycott Sal, but does not find much support for this initiative. Sal has been a part of the community for 25 years, and has taken pride in the fact that so many have enjoyed his food. Pino, however, is a racist who wants out because he says he simply cannot stand to be around people he regards as animals. His disgusting views are balanced by those of his father, who is much more sensible. Racial tensions start to build up (the sweltering heat is an obvious metaphor for this, and what astounding cinematography from Ernest Dickerson that makes the heat palpable and relentless), though, as Sal continues to have trouble with Buggin Out, and with Radio Raheem, whom he refuses to serve unless he turns his music off, something that Raheem is deeply offended by. The major conflict then is between black and white; the Hispanics and Koreans are left out of the equation. In a fit of rage, Sal busts up Raheem's radio, and they get into a fight, which spills outside as a crowd gathers to watch the spectacle. The cops arrive and pull Raheem off of Sal, one of them places his nightstick on Raheem's neck and holds it there until Raheem chokes to death; this sparks an ugly display of reactionary violence; excessive force is met with excessive force and Sal's parlor is vandalized. Mookie unleashes this fury by throwing a trashcan through the window. The film asks us to consider the nature of racism, and suggests that no one is free from its poisonous grasp, not Sal, who hurls the n-word unexpectedly at Raheem, or that Korean gentleman, who mentions Jewish New York mayor Ed Koch during one sequence where Lee cycles through Mookie, Pino, the Korean, and a Hispanic slinging epithets at one another.
There is the stuttering Smiley, who always carries around a picture of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, who are both quoted at the end of the film; Lee, of course, made a biopic about Malcolm X, starring Denzel Washington. The dialogue is rhythmic and poetic, almost like the lyrics in a rap song, and one cannot miss the relevance of repeatedly using the Public Enemy anthem Fight the Power, which is a angry summation of the black experience in American society. Lee's writing is brilliant, and earned him an Oscar nomination. The performances are universally potent; the best of the bunch is Aiello (also an Oscar nominee), but Lee is terrific as Mookie, not to mention accomplished veterans Davis and Dee. Samuel L Jackson is memorable as resident DJ Love Daddy.
Lee often stirs up controversy, most recently over an argument he had with Clint Eastwood, about the absence of black soldiers in Flags of Our Fathers; he also raised a fuss over Hurricane Katrina, and how he believed that the government blew up the levees in New Orleans so that blacks would be killed. But, despite all of this, he is a remarkable and intelligent filmmaker, and, along with 'Do the Right Thing', one should check out Malcolm X, He Got Game, Summer of Sam, and the heartbreaking documentary Four Little Girls. The film shows that racism is prevalent in every racial and ethnic community, and I have always felt that it criticizes the black community for this most especially, along with the notion of territoriality and separatism. Some of the commentary I have read on it points out that it seems to promote the worst black stereotypes, re-enforcing crude perceptions of black behavior, as unruly, unsophisticated, arrogant, and destructive. I do not know if this true or not, but this is a film with such rich and striking thematic content, one can discuss exhaustively.
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