Rating: 
Summary: Perhaps Lee's weakest film but still of value
Review: Spike Lee's long, flawed, frustrating, and compelling film Summer of Sam deals with the summer of '77 of New York City. As the city suffers from a sweltering heat wave, a serial killer who calls himself Son of Sam wanders through the night killing dark-haired women. Punk rock, the newest English import, takes a hold on disenfranchished youth who gather at the Mud Club while the decadent party at Studio 54 enters its own wasteful decline. This is the society that Lee recreates in this film and if that sounds like a huge subject, it is. The film often feels disorganized and seems, at times, to be wandering as aimlessly as its leading characters. But -- so what!? Spike Lee is one of our greatest filmmakers. A lot of people dislike Spike Lee -- he's young, rich, arrogant, and cocky. These are traits that would make a white artist an antihero. However, an African-American artist is expected to fulfill some sort of white liberal ideal of sainthood and when he fails to live up to the image of Sidney Poitier, he's resented. Therefore, Lee's films have always been attacked with a certain glee; a hope that Lee will turn out to be untalented. Summer of Sam was no different.Well, its not a perfect film. There are flaws -- the huge cast is full of one dimensional characters and the choice of John Leguizamo to play the film's central character -- a womanizing hairdresser wracked with Catholic guilt -- was a huge mistake. Leguizamo is simply too goofy to be a compelling hero. As well, the Son of Sam aspect is never credible. Michael Balducci's performance makes him to obvious a psycho whereas the real of Son of Sam was so disturbing precisely because he looked like any other anonymous nerd. As well, actually having a dog come on screen and tell him to kill wasn't a good idea. Especially since the dog speaks with John Turturro's voice. (Doesn't help that Turturro uses the same accent he used in The Big Lebowski). However, the film features a brilliant performance from Adrien Brody as a former Italian street kid turned punk rocker and especially Mira Sorvino who plays Leguizamo's young wife and has never been sexier or more touchingly vulnerable. For once, she allows her icy facade to melt away. But in the end, this film isn't about characters. Its about New York -- a city that Lee knows and loves. As a director, Lee knows how to shoot the streets of New York and its Lee's vision of sweltering streets on the verge of exploding that give this film, whatever its flaws, a power that keeps you watching. Lastly, it is true that this was the first film Lee made where the main characters were all white. This got a lot of attention and no one seemed to realize how truly offensive it was that, with all his obvious ability, the only coverage given to this film was that a black director made a film about white people. Nobody ever seems troubled when a white director, such as Norman Jewison, presumes to make films about the "black experience" in America -- even though those films inetivably reduce their black characters to bland, comforting stereotypes. At least Lee is willing to let his white characters come across as human beings.
Rating: 
Summary: WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS?
Review: John Leguizamo is a talented and diverse actor. Mira Sorvino also has a number of roles on her resume that distinguish her as gifted in the diversity department. These roles in Summer of Sam are not particularly flattering of their skills, nor is the script particularly well written. The script jumps around quite a bit, trying to illustrate the lives of several characters during this period of "terror" in New York, when a crazed, maniacal killer was running through the city murdering dark haired women. There is too much of the debauchery of the day emphasised-the drugging, the clubbing, the sex party orgies, and Leguizamo's character's complete inability to be faithful to his wife, played by Sorvino. Leguizamo is having an affair with his boss (Bebe Neuwirth) and just about all his clients (he is a hairdresser). And basically any other woman he meets. And yet he cannot seem to perform with his wife. The fact that we know all these things about him really does not lend credibility to the film . We know far more about his sexual proclivities than we know about anything else in this film. In fact it is never quite clear what we are supposed to be getting from this film. It tries, but it never gets where it wants to go.
Rating:
Summary: Fady Ghaly's reviews
Review: This is by far Spike Lee's grimmest film yet, which departs from his predominantly African-American themes and depicts the Italian side of New York City. While it was also his greatest'I think'its bleak tone is something that may draw plenty of viewers back, for this isn't at all the sort of film you'd presume would walk out of the theaters from with a smile on your face.
Summer of Sam is an intensely gritty and angry epic that takes you back to New York's infamous summer of 1977. Lee's aspiring film does more than re-create the events that unfolded throughout that period of time; in addition to being an entertaining time capsule with an effervescent seventies soundtrack that knows just how to set the mood (and ever so in influential, for I could not even begin to speculate of just how many other films used such tunes), it also deals graphically with the concept of the mob mentality.
The key characters, these bunch of despondent and allegedly 'shady' people Lee created were not at all something he shied away from using as being stereotypes. Instead, he uses them to shatter conventional perceptions of racial and ethnic characteristics to show the beauty'and deterioration'of human nature.
The character that stood as being most appealing to me would have to be Ritchie (Adrien Brody), a local kid who has enigmatically progressed a look of a punk and a British accent, which later as Son of Sam's plague of terror had a great impact among the citizens of New York, perplexed everyone for they assumed he was that mass murderer merely by his cultural background and rap that apparently offended many. Lee's greatest films thrum with a wound-up vitality, and Summer of Sam resonates with lewdness, solicitudes and remorse. It does not regard the murderer'as many would assume it does'but rather his victims'not those he slayed, but those whose overstimulated resourcefulness bloomed into a lynch mob mentality. There is a portion near the conclusion of the film that displays a side of human nature as loathsome as it is common: the fever to find someone to blame and the need to blame someone who is different'Ritchie being one who is different. Ritchie being one to find the whole disco scene as being unpalatable, which represents him as a misfit. A misfit who would then have to be whom else but the Son of Sam?
The film also takes large detours into Vinny's sexual life, played by John Leguizamo, who vividly captures the apprehension his character undergoes as he strives to be lawful to the alleged 'woman of his dreams'. But it seems that the more he strives to be faithful to her, the more women he ends up sleeping with, and yet each time his appetite indulges these long-legged, big-breasted women who almost seem to supplicate for his 'sexual skills', the more malevolence he has upon himself for being the man that he is, which proves true as he actually begins to assume that God is working against him, until ultimately such a deceitful lifestyle has a great affect onto him and it's all downhill from there, as it was for everyone else.
Leguizamo's performance was in my opinion the finest since Al Pacino's in The Godfather III, although unfortunately it's merely my opinion, for I think all the heart and soul he put into this project was completely disregarded. True'his presence in the film claimed him to fame, but that was merely his presence, for his performance wasn't allegedly worthy of an award, which I think is a persuasion of pure ignorance. Fair is a word the academy obviously doesn't go by, for it seems that they seek of those who are the most flamboyant.
'I see the new Latin artist as a pioneer, opening up doors for others to follow. And when they don't open, we crowbar our way in. We are taking our culture and suturing it to America. Like gum on the bottom of a shoe, we are not going to disappear. Unlike other people who totally assimilated, we are more interested in co-assimilation...America may not realize it yet, but Latin prototypes are being created right now, and not just by me. They are these mambo kings and salsa queens, Aztec lords and Inca princesses, every Hernandez and Fernandez, whom this country will one day come to understand and respect,' says John Leguizamo. And all I'd have to say to that is'well, I'm with you all the way.
Rating: 
Summary: Summer of Sam really makes you think
Review: What a great statement about intolerance. What starts out as a happy summer - nights out dancing, the return home of an old friend - disintegrates into finger pointing, betrayal, and fear. The more people The Son of Sam kills, the more everyone is convinced that their friend or neighbor is the killer, and soon, everyone who is different is getting beaten up. Meanwhile we, the audience, know that the mobs are assaulting the wrong people - we all know Berkowitz is the killer, and we also see that the so-called "good guys" in the mob are not "good" guys at all. They're junkies and cheaters and drug dealers.
Rating: 
Summary: Not all that
Review: I thought this was going to be a good movie. But it wasn't all what it was cracked up to be. I thought it was going to depict information about David Berkowitz going on a killing spree, but this movie had little to do with that. The movie focused more on the disco scene, the sexual revolution associated with the disco scene, and the punk movement in the 70's than with The sun of sam. This movie wasn't Spike Lee's best film. The movie would of did better just focusing on The late 70's Disco Scene such as Boogie Nights did. But then again the title didn't say Son of Sam, it said Summer of Sam so what was I supposed to expect? Nevertheless, I wasn't impressed with the movie. Even though the film wasn't that good this was the best acting Leguizamo has ever done, he's usually a cheesy and stupid actor.
Rating:
Summary: Spike Lee's Best
Review: and the best film of Summer 1999! I'm appaled that this movie was overlooked at the Oscars. I rave about it to everyone I know whenever movies come up because NO ONE, apparently, saw it. ... shame, too! Because this is an incredibly underrated little gem.
Rating:
Summary: I hate to say it, but this is not worth your time...
Review: This film is a sign that Spike Lee is fallin' off as one'a our greatest directors. After delivering some'a the greatest films of the last twenty years with 'Do the Right Thing', 'Malcolm X', 'Mo Better Blues', an' 'School Daze', then following those up with some pretty good movies with 'Get on the Bus', 'Crooklyn', and 'Clockers', more recently, he now turns in what is probably his weakest effort yet. Let me first say that I went to see this movie when it was first released in the theaters and had very high expectations. I've read a couple'a books that chronicle the Son of Sam killings (yes, I read!) during the summer of '77 and was intrigued to see what a visionary director like Spike could do with the material. As I sat in my seat watching it, I really wanted to like it. I mean, don't get me wrong, it is certainly entertaining for the most part; a fast-paced film and it has some exciting and tense moments, for that I think it deserved the 2 stars I gave it. But, the truth is that this film is all style and no substance. First of all, the Son of Sam killings is only the backdrop, this movie is actually about John Leguizamo's character, his affairs with women and his relationships with all his friends in their loud Bronx neighborhood. The time is re-created very well, the young men and women go to disco clubs, dance those cliched Saturday Night Fever numbers without looking ridiculous, they pop pills an' ludes like their vitamins, and naively toy with their seemingly-endless invincibility. I mean I gotta say that if Spike did anything right in this film, it was in re-creating that blistering hot summer in 1977. I mean, it really feels like you're there. But, alas, the characters are shallow. I felt no emotional connection to any of them. Most of them, to me, seemed to be selfish and unsympathetic, and, in all honesty, I didn't even feel sorry for any of them during the course of the whole movie, even during some of the most grisly scenes. The violence in the movie is pretty upsetting, but that isn't why I downgrade this movie. To me, this movie was a sad case of loads'a potential, but no motivational or directorial drive. It's almost like Lee jus' set up the premise, gathered some very talented actors (who I must say try their best), but then paid no more attention to anything else. Flow, continuity, significance of events? I mean, several well set up scenes in the movie end up going nowhere and getting dropped. Some people who gave this a negative review say that Spike was trying to make a Scorsese film. Being a huge Scorsese fan myself, I definitely see the resemblance, but I think that is mostly because this film is dealing with the Italian-American community, which all of Marty's best films deal with. Although I will say that I think Scorsese could have probably put this material to better use. No, I don't reccommend this film, but as I said I also went to see it with very high expectations, so I naturally was let down. I suppose I may have had a higher opinion of it, had I known that it wasn't going to be much to take in.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best
Review: People are being way too hard on this movie. I completely enjoyed it from start to finish. I loved the 70's and this movie does an amazing job of recreating 1977. Mira Sorvino is HOT and does a great job. The fight in the car on the way back from the orgy is a fantastic performance. There are a couple minor scenes in the film (like the final breakup scene) that I could have done without but overall very well done and my personal favorite by Spike Lee. One individual I haven't seen mentioned in any review is Jennifer Esposito as Ruby. WOW! Forget J-Lo, this Jennifer is much easier on the eyes. Also Bebe Neuwirth does nice work in a small role as Gloria who owns the hair salon John Leguizamo works at. The constant references to his sissy profession are pretty funny until you realize he is only in that line of work to cheat on his wife. The soundtrack is 2nd to none for disco era movies. People seem to be attempting to be Roger Ebert in reviewing this film. Just watch it and enjoy it. It's easy to get lost in the era of the film. Lee did a fantastic job of recreating 1977. Having Mark Breland, Evander Holyfield in roles so small you will probably never pick them out as well as having John Turturro as the voice of the dog that talks to Berkowitz was a nice touch by Lee also. Rent the movie, relax and enjoy. There IS very graphic violence and sex but real life isn't a Disney flick. I plan on buying this DVD as soon as I see it in a store for sale.
Rating: 
Summary: Regardless of what the other reviews say...
Review: I don't care what anyone else says - this movie had no point, and also lacked any artistic or entertaining value. I was surprised to find on the box a rating of R instead of X after watching it. Seriously, I cannot answer the question in my head of what the redeeming values are of this movie. There was no good reason to include all that sex, violence, and bad language. Now, I like a good vulgar movie - Pulp Fiction is one of the best. But this movie just plain sucked. Plus, I've seen Mira Sorvino act better in almost any other movie she's done. John Leguizamo's great credits (none) speak for themselves, as well.
Rating:
Summary: 1977..... Oh what a year!
Review: i loved this movie, but i'm hooked on serial killers. sos was facinating to me, because it looked at average people (yes, average people went to disco's, cbgb's and cheated on their signifigant others in the 70's.. and the 2000's as well) and their lives in relation to the killings rather than focusing solely on the killer. i'm showing my age, but the "new" punk movement vs. the disco scene brought back a ton of memories... but then i remember the zodiac as well..... great entertainment
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