Rating: 
Summary: Incredible
Review: Such a glorious examination of a cultural melting pot bubbling over on one hot day in New York. As the strains of Public Enemy filter in and out of the film, I watched in complete disarray oblivious to the imminent explosion of diverse ethnicities. A ghetto blaster, a pizza box, and a jumping rope are all symbols of the automatons that drive this otherwordly film. Spike Lee is a master of urban tales, a 21st Century Tennyson, Lee pastes together a visual and verbal exposition of love and hate colliding. ZD
Rating:
Summary: Much Better Than Anything Lee Has Done Before Or Since
Review: This movie's cinematography broke new ground at the time - it doesn't seem that way now because the style of this move has been imitated, but hardly duplicated, thousands of times since. What is most amazing about this movie is its careful portrayal of its characters - some are purely caricatures - some are stereotypical but fully fleshed out. Mookie is a lazy, irresponsible black man. Sal is an unsophisticated and ethnocentric Italian guy. In most movies made in our increasingly politically correct times, Mookie's character would be transmogrified into a brilliant and tortured genius who speaks six languages and dreams of being a physics professor while toiling away at thankless jobs due to his oppression by a racist system. Sal would be a working-class guy who harbors secret homosexual desires, is trapped in a stifling relationship with an uncaring wife and who dresses up in drag to go out in Manhattan. Instead, Lee creates characters that are realistic, like people we know from the neighborhood, and he makes them interesting and relevant. If Sal and Mookie reach an understanding, it's because each realizes how different one another's values and sensibilities are, not because they come to some false p.c. realization that "we're really all the same deep down." Lee manages to turn everyday New York into art without having to sanitize it or "messagize" it to make it resonate. A tour de force.
Rating:
Summary: grudging respect
Review: While Spike Lee comes off as a real jerk during interviews Do the Right Thing is a gritty and fair depiction of race relations in New York and explores the complexities between ethnic groups beyond simply black and white. I have seen other Spike Lee movies since Do the Right Thing and none have come close to the subtlety and impact that this movie has.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, and thats the truth, RUTH!
Review: Excellent film. One of the 5 best movies I've ever seen. Excellent acting From Ruby davis to Danny Aiello to Robin Harris.
Rating:
Summary: Do the Right Thing - an irritating piece of genius
Review: I remember a female friend of mine telling me she watched this film, and at the end stood up crying and yelling, "stop fighting! " This movie provokes you in that way. That Spike Lee managed to get these severe reactions from his actors - even the ones opposed to him onscreen - is brilliant. I doubt anybody in the cast completely agreed with his final product, but that is what makes this movie so moving. I wish other directors/producers would have the guts to tackle any subject as faithfully as Lee has here. I have followed John Turturro's career since "Do the Right Thing", and I'm barely able after all this time to forgive him for some of the things he says in this movie. Yes, it's only a movie. And Spike Lee is only a genius. To my friend who shouted in the theater, I can only say I wish this movie didn't have to be made.
Rating:
Summary: Ignore social volatility at your own peril
Review: A pastiche of humor, rage and a political message; unfliching and searing in its content. Shares the stage with Raging Bull as being one of the greatest films of the past twenty years.
Rating:
Summary: The best film on race relations yet.
Review: I am not a Spike Lee fan. It seems very rare that I find any of his movie watchable. "Do The Right Thing" however is filled to the brim with colorful characters and great actors. You can feel the heat sizzle in Brooklyn throughout the duration of the film. Danny Aiello is at his best as Sal, the owner of a pizza shop. Samuel L. Jackson is also top notch as the Love Daddy. At first it is filled with great drama and humor until a climatic riot at Sal's shop explodes. But the performances and the characters never lose anything. I only wish Spike Lee would put out more movies as wonderfully done as this one.
Rating:
Summary: one of the greatest films ever
Review: very real and brutatly honest.it came at the right time.and it is still a solid great film from one of the all-time greats in my book. so many sides of life and so many details a pure tour de force.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing!!
Review: Spike Lee has done some great movies. (He has also done some bad movies.) This is his greatest!!! DO THE RIGHT THING is a classic morality tale about the Bedford Stuyvest(sp?) community in Brooklyn, and the many races which inhabit it one the hottest day of the year. Spike Lee does a great job acting in the lead role of "Mooky". Danny Aiello is intense as "Sal" the owner of the local Pizzaria. And the films best performance is Giancarlo Esposito as the angry, yet somewhat confused, black man, "Buggaout" (i think thats his name. it's hard for me to make it out exactly!!) His performance was Oscar caliber, but of course this was a hip and provacative movie made by a young black man, so there was very little chance of the Oscars paying any attention to it.(By the way, what does Spike Lee have to do to win an Oscar? Make Holocaust Documenterys? Beside bieng looked over for DO THE RIGHT THING, he was ignored by the Academy for MALCOLM X, which was brilliant, and one of the best movies of 1992!! And how come Denzel didn't win best Actor? He was incredible!! And his documentery THREE LITTLE GIRLS was considered by critics and many audiences to be the best documentery of 1997 year, but again he lost to, you guessed it, a Holocaust documentery. Not that the Holocaust is gettin' old, because it is a very serious subject that should alwasys be recognized, but COME ON!! And no, I am not black, i'm very white.) Anyway, this is a tremendously brilliant movie, and I highly recomend it!!
Rating:
Summary: One of the only truly good films about race ever made
Review: Prejudice is a lofty subject in films, and many films have tried to broach it. Unfortunately, most of these films take an unrealistic and preachy approach, making one group sainted and the other group evil. Spike Lee blows the lid off that theory with this film, where no one is particularly right or better than anyone else. Do The Right Thing showcases, better than any other work of art (film or otherwise), that people aren't all that different and that it's all down to attitudes and reactions - and no one in this film always has the right attitude, from the pizza shop boys to the Koreans to Mookie himself. The most striking example of this attitude in the film is the montauge of ethnic slurs, from every race featured towards every race imaginable. Each group has their own irrational prejudices. It can be argued that the least sympathetic character in the film is a black man who starts trouble because he dislikes the idea of an Italian restaurant with pictures of Italians on the wall - Danny Aiello isn't portrayed as a horrible man for going against the request to take them down, though his end reaction isn't portrayed as right, either. Definitely haunting, and definitely a masterpiece without a sanctimonious attitude. There is nothing to dislike about Do The Right Thing, with the exception of the incredibly irritating title sequence. A must-see, if just for the debate it raises (and for the always watchable Sam Jackson, who operates almost like a narrator to the story, as a DJ who watches over the neighborhood).
|
