Review of Do the Right Thing (1997) by John H — 07 Oct 2014

How would you imagine spending a hot summer day with the thermostat boiling past a hundred degrees Fahrenheit? Director Spike Lee of the movie "Do The Right Thing" would believe one should watch and observe a long day in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. New York Knick fanatic Spike Lee would like for his audience to see other side of New York. Not the bright lights, big cities, and a place full of opportunity side. But the side of the urban, hip-hop originating, majority of the middle to low class African American population New York.

Although some may visualize this movie as being too militant, confusing, or too much of a focus on the middle-class values mixed in with street smarts, but all Lee wishes to accomplish is a way to express how racism was a major central fact during the year 1989 when he was growing up. From the very start of this movie, the audience will be drawn into the energetic woman dancing to the song Fight the Power by Public Enemy, a rap crew during the late 80s and early 90s. Exemplifying that the idea of this movie is to propose a fight for blacks to have their rights the same as every other human being in Brooklyn.

Introducing himself as Mookie, a pizza delivery boy for Sal's Famous Pizzeria owned by the famous hard-nosed Sal and his two sons. Mookie's character was an exact replica of a young African American male trying relentlessly to make a quick dollar to support his girlfriend Gloria and son Hector. Playing his role like a true New Yorker from the heart of Brooklyn should. Wanting to "Fight the Power" of the racist police and even the management of Sal's Famous Pizzeria. Some of the others characters that are brought into the day are sympathetic and some are hateful. Others are the likable ones that do bad things. "Isn't that the way it is in America today?" quoted by Roger Ebert who feels that this movie is racially and culturally brilliant.

The neighborhood itself represented the struggle of most blacks during this time period. Having no air conditioning on a hot long day was far from strange to the people that reside there. Finding anyway possible to remain cool, whether it was to open every window in the house to placing large ice cubes all over your body. This troubled low-income neighborhood gives every aspect of how life was back then. The cinematography of the film is what sets it apart from any normal movie under that category. With close shots of a character's eyes or different angles of a building or an extreme zoom in of a character shows some humor in this harshly raced film.

With every typical thing you would see in an urban hood such as this one. There are the two stores that are not black owned, three old men who sit around in the hot sun and comment on everything that passes by them, a simple minded street person who walks around trying to sell photos of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. All things you would see if you were strolling through the ghetto. .

This film is hand down the most controversial movie to ever premiere. All of the reactions towards this film saying that it will cause trouble in society or it was indecisive between liberal pieties or militancy avoid the central truth of the movie, Roger Ebert said it best by claiming "that it is reflecting the actual and current state of race relations in American than any other movie of our time.".