Film Review COMM 100

November 23, 2015

Film Review of Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing”

This film is about race relations during the late 1980’s in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY also known as “Bed-Stuy” during a smoldering heat wave of the summer. During the opening credits of the film, Rosie Perez, who plays “Tina”, Spike Lee’s nagging son’s mother, is featured dancing to Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” song in what appeared to be a dark graffiti-ridden alley. This certainly was an attention-grabber but aside from the boxing gloves she wore, the dance piece did not support the premise of the film.

Several scenes of the film were shot inside the neighborhood pizzeria, “Sal’s Famous Pizza” which is ran by “Sal” (Danny Aiello) the owner and his two sons, “Pino” (John Turturro) and “Vito” (Richard Nelson). Spike Lee’s character “Mookie” is the delivery person who always seemed to make long deliveries in the neighborhood on foot. These long deliveries enabled the viewer to see the people and houses of the neighborhood. The pizzeria is very dim with dull colors as is most of the neighborhood. There are certainly lots of colors, but it seems that the director and cameraman purposefully toned them down to express the overwhelming temperatures and tensions that were brewing in the neighborhood amongst the Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, and Koreans. The neighborhood looked almost like a theatrical set instead of an actual neighborhood. The one character whose lighting was always bright is “Radio Raheem” (Bill Nunn). The light always shined on his large boom-box which he carried around with him throughout the film, providing the neighborhood with music, and two gold multi-finger rings, which symbolically read, “Love” on one hand and “Hate” on the other.

The film reaches a climatic point when a radical young man by the name of “Buggin’ Out” (Giancarlo Esposito) demand that “Sal” add some famous Black people’s pictures to the walls of the pizzeria to accompany the famous Italian celebrities’ pictures in order to show some respect for the predominately black patrons that frequent the establishment. Tensions soon flare and Sal, along with his son Pino, are forced to reveal their racial prejudices. This results in the murder of a popular character and the demise of the restaurant and the neighborhood.

Spike Lee attempted to show the hidden prejudices that the people of the “Bed-Stuy” community felt for many years. He allowed the viewer to see racial bias from everyone’s perspective by giving the characters of the film moments to express their disapproval of the other’s actions towards them; often zooming in on the characters’ faces during heightened moments. This film was well worth the effort that Spike Lee put into to it and although funny at times, thanks to the antics of actors such as, Samuel L. Jackson (Mister Senor Love Daddy), Roger Guenveur Smith (Smiley), Paul Benjamin (ML), Frankie Faison (Coconut Sid), Robin Harris (Sweet Dick Willie), Ossie Davis (Da Mayor), and Ruby Dee (Mother Sister), the message was conveyed successfully that people need to talk about the racial tensions that plague communities across the country before they escalate into catastrophic events.