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Monday, June 30, 2014

MOVIE REVIEW Do The Right Thing
 Brothers On Walls, Conflict, And A Scorching Hot Brooklyn Summer

Spike Lee as Mookie and Danny Aiello as Sal in Mr. Lee's thought-provoking "Do The Right Thing".  Universal
       
by Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com        Follow popcornreel on Twitter FOLLOW                                           
Monday, June 30, 2014

The following is my review of "Do The Right Thing", handwritten on July 3, 1989.  Spike Lee's film was theatrically released in the U.S. on Friday, June 30, 1989.
"How come you got no brothers up here on the wall?", Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito) asks early on in Spike Lee's brilliant and electrifying "Do The Right Thing".  Buggin' Out, a racially conscious black man, asks this while in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, a predominantly black neighborhood, on a very hot summer day.  He asks this question while inside an even hotter pizzeria pulsing with racial tension and the scalding heat of a huge oven. 

Sal's Famous Pizzeria is proudly owned by its white Italian-American namesake.  Sal, excellently played by Danny Aiello, is the sole white businessman on the block in "Do Or Die" Bed-Stuy.  Sal and his pizzas are loved by his overwhelmingly black clientele.  But pictures of exclusively white Italian-American entertainers on Sal's "Wall Of Fame" bug Buggin' Out.  "Since we spend much money here, we have some say," he insists.  Sal says it's his business and he can put whatever pictures on his wall he wants.  Both have valid points, and their debate is the epicenter of "Do The Right Thing", a superbly written and memorable film with an even-handedness and compassion that is remarkable. 

The Buggin' Out-Sal argument will be revisited and have devastating consequences.

In "Do The Right Thing" Public Enemy's music anthem "Fight The Power" is arguably representative of the ideas of Malcolm X, one of two legendary black activists quoted at the end of Mr. Lee's film.  Martin Luther King Jr. is the other, and Steel Pulse's song "Can't Stand It" appears to represent his sentiments.  The iconic leaders' thoughts on violence reflect the tenor of the film's key events.  The quotes, one on violence and its effects, the other on self-defense, epitomize the film's searing conflict.  Their words are similar and prescient yet haunting and ironic, as both died at the hands of violence, and one of them, Malcolm X, severely misunderstood, feared by many and propagandized by the media, was erroneously labeled as a violent man.

Mr. Lee paints the vibrant characters of this effervescent and colorful neighborhood with nuanced brushes.  Its people brim over with humanity and unyielding dimension, from a wise old man and drunk nicknamed Da Mayor (Ossie Davis) and eagle-eyed elder stateswoman Mother Sister (Ruby Dee), to a stoic, lumbering stereo music amplifier in Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) and a stuttering photo hawker named Smiley (Roger Guenveur Smith).  "Do The Right Thing" is teeming with rich tapestry and character motif.  There's such vivid beauty (fantastic cinematography by Ernest Dickerson) in both setting and character that neither are forgettable. 

Each character is flawed in a genuine, authentic way.  Their behaviors are such that in any and everything they do during the film's solitary day they can't fully be let off the hook, no matter how likable.  Mookie (Mr. Lee) is Sal's lone delivery man, a lazy guy who wants to "get paid".  He's passive but pivotal.  Sal is avuncular and amiable but is a risible, gruff character.  There's paternalism, bombast, gentle self-satisfaction and patronizing within him.  Sal possesses qualities that will shock, and, as with all the characters Mr. Lee's film's intricate script construction provides hints in the smallest of gestures and softest of words. 

Mr. Lee's political calculus is extraordinary; he has distilled the eternal institutionalized and casual racism of American society into the one square block on which "Do The Right Thing" was filmed.  The ingredients of the hot Brooklyn summer are combustible but so too is an inescapable, long history of unprovoked New York Police Department assaults and killings of blacks, some of which are referenced.  Mr. Lee dedicates his film to the families of the victims of recent NYPD police murders (of Yvonne Smallwood and Michael Stewart, for example.)  Mr. Lee shrewdly captures the socioeconomic fall-out of chronic unemployment of black men, the invasive effects of gentrification, and immigrant businesses that proliferate a black neighborhood with no visible black businesses of its own.  These elements form a fuse that travels swiftly along already-spilled gasoline.  It's as if the entire neighborhood is on a griddle waiting to be burned.

The director takes full stock of New York City's highly-polarized racial climate, stirred by a mayor whom the director desperately wants to vacate his comfy home at Gracie Mansion this September.  The Brooklyn neighborhood and people who live and work in it is definitely up for grabs, and it's hard to say who at any one time controls its politics even if we know who controls its soul.  The disparate economic imbalances though, are a powerful marker, a barometer that is a thermometer of its own on a record-breaking sweltering summer day.  (The film's soundtrack and Bill Lee's jazz music score by the way, are excellent.  I could listen to the music and watch this great film again and again.)

In many ways "Do The Right Thing" is about contradictions, duality and acts of good and bad will.  Buggin' Out, whom like other blacks happily spend their money at Sal's, tries to stir fellow residents into a boycott of the establishment.  Banned, he leaves Sal's Famous with a slice of pizza as he exhorts its patrons to "boycott Sal's!"  Buggin' Out loves Sal's pizza as much as anyone in Bed-Stuy.  Sal and his overwhelmingly black customers have been a 25-year love affair.  Sal's sons meanwhile, view Bed-Stuy denizens very differently.  Vito (Richard Edson), the good son, is a friendly guy who gets counsel from Mookie.  The racist Pino (a fantastic John Turturro) despises blacks and abhors working in the neighborhood but loves Prince and Eddie Murphy, in one very funny scene.  When Pino laments working in Bed-Stuy by using racist invective, his father doesn't corral him.  It's a telling moment.

One of the starkly jarring metaphors comes near the end of Spike Lee's thought-provoking film.  When Sal and Mookie stand on opposite sides in front of a compromised structure it may as well represent the state of race relations in America, a crumbling house divided from centuries old violence, dissention and enmity.  Many critical and incisive questions are asked but all are very far from being answered.  Who did the right thing?  Who doesn't?  What is the right thing?  Each person who sees Mr. Lee's phenomenal film will have to judge for themselves.

Also with: Samuel L. Jackson, Joie Lee, Rosie Perez, Robin Harris, Martin Lawrence.

"Do The Right Thing" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association.  Its running time is one hour and 59 minutes.
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