It is absurd that as recently as the eighties there was no
prominent African-American voice in Hollywood. Just months before that decade
ended, Spike Lee finally snatched the megaphone with the film that made him a
household name, and it did so without playing nice with the establishment. Lee
presented a particularly sweltering day in Bed-Stuy where tempers rise with the
mercury and ultimately boil over into murder and a racially charged clash at an
Italian-owned pizzeria in a largely black community.
Lee casts himself as Mookie, an employee of Sal’s Famous
Pizzeria and the film’s focal point. Lee does a good job in front of the
camera, though it is the rest of the outstanding cast (Samuel L. Jackson, Rosie
Perez, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, John Turturro, Joie Lee, Richard Edson, Bill
Nunn, Frankie Faisson, Robin Harris, Danny Aiello, and the especially
electrifying Giancarlo Esposito) that really zaps it to life. Do the Right Thing still belongs to Lee,
who not only turns in a provocative script, but also films it with unbridled
imagination and energy, his camera zooming and tilting like an untethered falcon,
his subjects staring down that camera to confront the audience directly, to
muse about hate and love.
