Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

DO THE RIGHT THING is a 40 Acres & A Mule Productions/Universal Pictures presentation. It runs 120 minutes, premiered in American theaters on June 30, 1989, and is rated R for some intense violence, pervasive strong language/racial slurs, and for sexuality/nudity.

INTRODUCTION
"I feel my job as a filmmaker is to shed light on the problems that face us, and by an examination of these problems, hopefully an answer can be worked out. I think, in order to fix this problem we have to acknowledge that that the problem's there. And a lot of us don't even know these problems exist," said by Spike Lee in "The Making Of Do The Right Thing."

I start off this review by making a confession to all those who are reading this review: for the life of me, I have never seen a Spike Lee film in my nineteen years of existence. Somewhere along the line, I forgot about him up until the release of 25TH HOUR, and nostalgia crept into my mind. But that was put on hold for quite a while, like a lot of planned reviews. When you work, go to school, have a life and sleep, there’s hardly enough time for me to write 400 reviews like I wanted to, enhancing and sharpening my skills as a critic and catching up on what I have missed. It sucks to want to do something you like and not have the enough freedom to do it in. Let this be a lesson to you: if you have the desire to do a goal, don't sit out on the sidewalk after you've been beaten down, for there is plenty of time to get sh*t done. Here I am making the most of a couple of free hours punching out a review which is going to end up taking me two weeks to finish!

Getting back to why I missed Spike Lee movies, I was waiting for older years to wake me up. Now here I am, able and ready to tackle perhaps the quintessential Spike Lee joint. In 1989, he made his third film following SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT and SCHOOL DAZE. It was a movie that raised controversy because of its theme, and the bipolar ending did little to curb most critics' confusion. But critics like Roger Ebert, Richard Roeper, James Berardinelli, and Desson Howe have caught onto this film, and have included it in their "Best Of All Time" lists. You know something…I can not disagree with them with even hidden guilt. DO THE RIGHT THING is easily one of the BEST, most UNDERRATED American motion pictures in the entire history of the motion picture. Those AFI dopes need to kick themselves in their a**es for not putting this in the Top 100.

STORY
The hottest day in 1989, in Brooklyn, the Bedford-Stuyevesant area, is getting hotter by the hour. It is in this neighborhood where we are witnesses to the activities and attitudes of more than a dozen key characters, and by the end of this day, they will all get out of the frying pan, out of the oven, and into a bonfire that will rock this town. A character will die, a riot will break out at the ultimate community center, and Brooklyn will erupt into a burst of anger. Who is doing the right thing in this movie? Let’s take a look at the key characters:

- Mookie (Spike Lee) is a delivery boy at Sal's Famous Pizzeria, the place where people have gathered for a slice of life for over 25 years. He has a child, who is kept after by his foul-mouthed, Latina girlfriend Tina (Rosie Perez), and a doting sister named Jade (Joie Lee). He is also well known throughout his block, and has plenty friends and enemies. But the heat, the anger, the tension and disillusion with his place of work will weigh upon him.

- Sal (Danny Aiello), the owner of the pizzeria, is an Italian-American man who prides himself on his palace, which he built with his bare hands. He wants to keep his employees simmered down, his place orderly, and extra cheese as a $2 fee. But Sal’s often inclined to rage and often points it in the wrong direction. He also has an internal bigotry beneath the surface, and it becomes completely external when push comes to shove. At the end of the movie, this rage will help the heat rise in his pizza place, before the smoke clears in.

- Sal’s two sons and fellow employees are Pino and Vito (John Turturro and Richard Edson). Pino has an open hatred for blacks, and despises them with his life, but it’s ironic as his favorite celebrities (Magic Johnson, Prince and Eddie Murphy) are of color. Pino wants to keep a leash on Vito, who wants to be friendly with everyone, and is given advice by Mookie about not letting him take sh*t from Pino. Vito often talks like a black man, which helps to further anger his brother and one of several conflicts.

- Da Mayor (Ossie Davis) is a drunken, self-appointed sidewalk politician. Everyday he walks down the street catching the attention of the people, mostly in particular the creepy but wise Mother Sister (Ruby Dee). At one point in the film, he runs past a fast-moving car in order to protect an endangered youth. He then says to MS, "Wasn't trying to be a hero. I just seen what was happening, and I reacted -- didn't even think. Probably wouldn't have done it if I had thought."

- Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito) is Mookie’s friend, a hot-headed militant who is beyond angry when he notices the Wall of Fame at Sal’s Pizzeria lacks any African-American role models. Eventually, he gets a few people together to start a boycott, and he barges into Sal’s on that same night, and his actions, as well as Sal’s, provide the springboard from which the tension reaches boiling point.

- Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) is a hulking, quite figure in the neighborhood whose boom box does the talking: Public Enemy's "Fight The Power" is the song of choice, and it‘s at high volume. He’s a man who believes in the power of love conquering hate, and he explains so as he shows Mookie his new brass knuckles with LOVE and HATE embedded on them. But he unnecessarily gets angry at Korean store owners Sonny and Kim (Steve Park and Ginny Yang) for not easily processing the fact that he needs 20 D batteries. However, the moment his boom box is silenced forever, is the moment his tolerance-toting anthem dies, and hate conquers love once and for all in the night.

- The three guys who set up shop across the street from that Korean man’s joint are snide old black fellows who spew jive and opinions with profane glee. They are ML (Paul Benjamin), Sweet Dick Willie (Robin Harris), and Coconut Sid (Frankie Faizon).

- Also along for the ride are a couple others, including the handicapped yet politically-charged Smiley (Roger Guenveur) and loyal radio DJ Mister Senor Love Daddy (Sam Jackson, or "Samuel L." as he later was known as). The latter serves like one of those chorus folk you’d find in Greek tragedy fables, and dishes out an excellent array of black musicians at his station (yet he forgot Living Colour!).

OVERVIEW
People didn’t want to face reality when this film came out. It's kind of f*cked up beyond reason when we look at "Reality TV" and we hardly think of the outside world. In 1989, Spike Lee made a movie which unconventionally, sugar-free, brutally and with head-on urgency, thrust itself into the racial smorgasbord of the time, and whether you admit it or no, it still happens. It is also not, as many critics say it to be, "a call to racial violence." There are no glasses to help them see this movie clear.

This is meant as a wake-up call, a voice of reason, embodied in the character of Mister Senor Love Daddy. "Y’all need to chill!" he screams at one point in the movie, when Mookie, Pino, a Latino, a cop, and the Korean man are all hurtling racial slurs and insults at each other (do they seem to pay attention to this seasoned DJ?). That is one of only a few characters in the movie you can somewhat consider completely moral.

The movie was made after the tragedy of Howard Beach, when three black youths were racially prejudiced from white pizzeria patrons and one was eventually killed by moving automobile. This isn't the first, definitely not the last, recorded incident for racial violence, and indeed L.A. was rocked by a riot itself. And yet this movie cannot take any blame, much to the dismay of cynics who easily claimed this movie was a call to arms. I can’t also help but remember examples such as these which the movie references to: the September 1983 tragedy of Michael Stewart, strangulated by NYC police over spraying graffiti on a subway, or when elderly Eleanor Bumpers was shot to death in October 1984 because the cops who were trying to evict her noticed a knife in her hands and felt she might be hostile.

The characters in DO THE RIGHT THING, with the exception of perhaps the older, more seasoned members of the neighborhood, fail to actually do the right thing! They have morals like light switches, constantly being turned on and off. In the end of the movie, Buggin’ Out, Sal and Radio Raheem all fail to do right thing, and Mookie (who is a slacker in his own way) finally explodes in tension which simmers from all the pressure and injustice he has witnessed. The only character who has any shot at some sort of salvation at the end is Da Mayor; everybody else is racked by a torn community and broken dreams. Especially Sal and Mookie, at the very end, when they meet one for last pay day.

All this would fall under some serious weight had Spike Lee had not professionally imbued the characteristics and seriousness of these people. Everybody in this movie seem to transcend stereotypes, unlike characters you meet in many modern movies. You could have turned the Italians into over-the-top figures in the wrong movie, or made black folk and foreigners seem as lazy and annoying as the ones we've seen in the FRIDAY movies. But Lee has a vision, a voice, and a determination. This becomes a labor of love and less of something defecated from the Hollywood candy machine.

There's a lot to notice about this film. Smiley has a hardly passable business, selling photos of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. They offer contrasting viewpoints at the end, so many people could easily have gotten the "muddled message" impression from this. Spike Lee doesn’t try to offer a concrete solution, but instead sheds light upon the situation and the problem, leaving you, the viewer(s), to decide what you think of it. But no matter where you stand, you just have to witness the things that surface on that hot Brooklyn day, as a couple black youths (including Martin Lawrence in his film debut) inflame Da Mayor and a passing goombah in a vintage convertible. Notice all of the tensions between Mookie and Sal's family. Follow the attitudes of the black characters from Da Mayor on down. There’s no way you can deny the authenticity of these situations, even in a piece of work like this.

But the movie isn't all about playing the race card for dramatic effect. There is plenty of comic relief found in Da Mayor’s hopeless courting of Mother Sister, and of course those three black fellas parked across the Korean shop. The late Robin Harris is really hilarious in this one, as are Frankie Faison and Paul Benjamin. Getting back to the drama, it is also effective in showing the bonds between community, family, friends, sanity and understanding placed on earthquake ground. There seems to be conflicts in every frame of this film, and the trained ear and eye will pick up at least 25 of them.

The movie is not supposed to give you a straightforward solution, but the solution lies somewhere in the movie. It is spoken by the grumpy yet knowledgeable Mayor, a man who when we first meet sees happiness in a can of Miller High Life which he can‘t get from the local store. Whether or not in reality the citizens of this Bedford-Stuy block take into consideration their mortalities and their natural differences, they unleash a cathartic brushfire that turns the most scorching night in 1989 into a spiritual encounter with the heat of the already set sun.

DIRECTION
Spike Lee’s second film shows a director, writer, actor, and overall filmmaker at the prime of his life. I can’t really be sure, seeing as how I missed everything from SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT to BAMBOOZLED, but this man is a sure genius. Give him credit for not pulling any punches with the scenery: it is shot on location in Bedford-Stuy, with cinematographer Ernest Dickerson using natural lighting and the production team using vivid colors to unleash the color’s heat. He gets performances from the cast that all add elements and never truly seem to outdo each other. His camera angles and use of slow-motion give a hefty urban style and professionalism, so it's moreover a good-looking movie. And like I said, Spike Lee has a voice, and much like Radio Raheem's box, it is at high volume. I am anticipating seeing more of Lee’s work now.

ACTING
Danny Aiello plays Sal with a broad range of emotions, and succeeds at every one of them. His smoldering rage at his employees and customers, and his mutual understanding and appreciation of their services. Sal is the fatherly figure of the pizzeria, but I wouldn’t advise you to get too attached to it, and pay attention to the many underlying tones in the conflict scenes. You may then understand some of the intended racism Spike wanted to put in it. But Aiello is superb, and actually Spike doesn’t do a bad job himself. I appreciated much of his acting skills in this particular movie, and his delivery and expressions signal disillusion and boredom and shiftlessness. Mookie isn’t truly a real hero, but his character is a pretty sympathetic and even a tad bit wise.

Wisdom is the dish of Da Mayor, and as played by Ossie Davis in another excellent performance, he’s played as more than just a loveable black version of Arthur Bach. His performance brims with refreshing confidence, dignity, drama and bravado. Another couple of superb performances come from John Turturro, who as the fiercely prejudicial Pino demonstrates a natural, stellar acting ability, and from the equally skilled Giancarlo Esposito as the fast-talking, outrageously radical Buggin’ Out. Richard Edson respectfully and with distinguished talent holds his own as Vito, as does Ruby Dee as Mother Sister, the most moral person on the block.

The supporting cast includes many more gems to behold. I got a big comedic relief from Robin Harris, Paul Benjamin and Frankie Faison as the jive-talking brothers by the brick wall. Samuel L. Jackson gives us hints of future brilliance as Mister Senor Love Daddy. Rosie Perez offers a lot of attitude and radiance in her debut performance, and Martin Lawrence seemed at that time a talent in the making. And last but definitely not least are Joie Lee in an authentic performance as Jade, Bill “Radio Raheem” Nunn in a performance that relies on physical fire and inner intensity he carries out with gusto, and Roger Guenveur in a straight supporting role as Smiley.

MUSIC
Selections abound from Take 6, Steel Pulse, Ruben Blades, EU, Perry, and Teddy Riley & Guy. Spike‘s daddy William J.E. Lee conducted the Natural Spiritual Orchestra, which gives the movie it’s excellent score. However, the musical peak point is Public Enemy’s edgy, funky, rebellious re-interpretation of the old Isley Brothers song “Fight The Power,” which blasts out of that boom box Radio Raheem plays (which everybody wants turned down, but I say “Bring Tha Noise!”). Not only does that song have the balls to say Elvis is a racist sucker, but it also serves as the movie’s quintessential anthem, attacking racism with zeal. If Eminem could get nominated for “Lose Yourself,” where the f*ck were the Academy in 1989 (they gave the Best Picture to DRIVING MISS DAISY, and denied this film a nomination…kiss my white a**!).

VIOLENCE/GORE
Some intense fight scenes, a graphic strangulation, and a riot. Blood is hardly seen shed though, thank goodness.

SEX/NUDITY
Rosie Perez’s breasts are seen briefly in a sex scene involving ice cubes.

CONCLUSION
There is no call to violence in this film, but a yearn for tolerance. Could DO THE RIGHT THING be like the cinematic equivalent of the classic Marvin Gaye album “What’s Going On”? I think so. It’s a serious, colorful, often hilarious and often jaw-dropping movie that entertains and delivers its message without preaching. Rarely does a film like this come along, and it’s sad how a movie like this got all the wrong comments from people 13 years ago. Did Roger Ebert really have to write three essays about this one! I don’t know, but I found them interesting. If you can get the Criterion edition of this film, do it!

DVD DETAILS
Reviewed directly from the Criterion DVD release of the movie, DO THE RIGHT THING is presented in 1.85:1 aspect ratio formatted for 16x9 TV sets. The audio quality comes in 2.0 Dolby Surround or in PCM 2.0 stereo, and there are optional English subtitles.

Picture quality retains a great sharpness, only getting soft at the occasional wide shot. As for print defects, I noticed a surprising amount of grain in some shots, as well as some scratches and marks that are fairly recognizable. But the biggest quality of this transfer is the restoration of the amazing cinematography and the details to the colors. Approved by Ernest Dickerson himself, this picture contains natural photography with vibrant colors that shine with the appropriate lighting. That sequence set to the song which goes “I know you can’t stand the heat” shows surprising picture quality. Reddish hues and black levels are maintained with precision, and shadows are beneficially natural.

As for audio quality, the PCM stereo is easily able to be placed on a backburner when faced with Dolby 2.0 Surround. The jazzy, saxophone-powered music score spreads right through the various channels in the front speakers, and that Public Enemy number has got plenty of bass. The forward spectrum is used most constantly, and surrounds show up mostly to provide the effects of scorching fire trails. I had no problem with the dialogue, which came out as distinct and accurate.

Many of the laserdisc extras from 1995 are brought over onto the DVD. On disc one, the only real extra we get is the audio commentary track. On this feature, Spike Lee, Ernest Dickerson, Joie Lee, and production designer Wynn Thomas were recorded separately and edited together with Public Enemy’s Chuck D. filling in the names of the commentators as well as providing an introduction.

The commentary is basically dominated by Lee and Dickerson. Joie Lee does get in a lot of information about being in the Lee family, reflecting on previous acting achievements, and puts in her say on the infamous ending of the film. Thomas likes to reinstate the argument about how this film steers clear from the drug stereotype many critics foisted upon this film for not including, and is proud of the collaborative freedom between him, Lee and Dickerson.

But alas, Lee and Dickerson are the main speakers and have a lot of interesting things to say. Lee is a very soft-spoken, collected individual here, and he focuses a lot on the inspirations, production details, and the messages which were fatally misinterpreted by many critics. He also admits his opinions on a lot of the film’s many conflicts, reminds us of the importance in creating a piece about a community, makes fun of the "Revisionist’s history" which was evident in Robert Zemeckis' FORREST GUMP and BACK TO THE FUTURE (how dare they use white folk to discredit the influence of the black folk!), and offers the usual fascinating commentary on cast and crew.

Dickerson is a skilled cinematographer who provides barrels of highly sharp production details in this commentary. A man who admits to his inspirations vocally, he gets us into the creation of the heat-racked atmosphere and the intoxicating use of colors. He digresses on the opening sequence with Rosie Perez dancing against the blown-up slides of Brooklyn settings, and how there was another option which was undercut by the problems with economics. There’s also plenty of detail to the many camera tricks that have become trademarks in Spike Lee joints. Criterion commentaries are usually the best audio tracks on the market, and this is an excellent listen.

Disc two spans the rest of the copious bonus features. In a brief introduction that spans one minute, Spike Lee welcomes us to this Criterion release. By the time we’re done skimming through these extras, you can check out "Spike’s Last Words." Spike finally gets some of the demons out of him, as he explicitly addresses journalists Joe Klein and Jack Crow for their comments about the film being the wrong thing. It seems that the press furor of 1989 has stigmatized Lee for quite a while, and his final comments on the state of race relations are just as sharp as his jabs against the aforementioned critics.

This menu offers plenty of filling and not a single gram of fat, and rarely have I appreciated the special features of a motion picture on DVD than I do with this release. In the first of many more introductions to the bonus features, Spike Lee introduces us (0:39) to the "Behind-The-Scenes" segment. Divided up into five divisions from "Read through" to "Wrap Party" (and able to be viewed all at once), this footage was shot on video by Spike and his youngest brother, Cinque, and runs a total running time of 56:14. From the read through on, we get to see the spunky Rosie Perez, the articulate Giancarlo Esposito and the fiery Danny Aiello showing a taste of their acting talents.

The footage progresses the actors, from Aiello to Perez to Martin Lawrence and Robin Harris as they discover their characters, talk about the experience being among the cast, and offer up plenty of interesting on-set candor. Rosie Perez is given a lot of focus here, but I wasn’t complaining: she has a lot of neat comments towards the reading, the learning process on set, the life being in a slum, and on Paul Benjamin. Robin Harris’ comedic gifts are evident as we see him digging into the motivation behind Sweet Dick Willie, and we also see the black youths in the movie confront Sal himself. There’s so much interesting stuff here, that it’s a testament to Spike for allowing us to view these nostalgic pieces.

Spike Lee also introduces us to the "Making Of" feature with another direct-to-camera bit, running 0:46. The 60-minute production directed by St. Clair Bourne, "Making Of DO THE RIGHT THING" spares no expense in showing us the production of this film as condensed in interviews, production footage, and shots of the actual set construction.

We are taken to the actual neighborhood, and we witness the retouching of the many residential areas. We get lots of candid chatter from Spike and the gang, and we witness rehearsal footage, comments from the actual Bed-Stuy residents, and we even see the infamous Fruit of Islam at one point. We don’t focus on promotional jargon that much here, so we have to be grateful for a piece like this, which spares no expense in detailing the production from pre-production to wrap party and focuses much more on the community and the influence of the filmmaking on them than the usual presentation does.

In the "Making Of..." menu, there’s a bonus feature called "Back To Bed-Stuy," a 4:45 feature wherein Lee and line producer Jon Kilik take a reflective look back at the old neighborhood where they shot at. There’s some neat production info and a look at the many sites as they exist now, faded and deconstructed.

We also get a gallery of storyboards for the "Riot Sequence." Lee hardly ever storyboards his films, as he mentions in the 1:28 introduction, but this particular sequence called for some detailed drawings. As presented on this DVD, there are 60 pages worth of slides, with three different storyboard frames per page. You can enlarge any one of these 180 slides by highlighting the slide and pressing enter. A very interesting bonus feature.

Editor Barry Brown gets his own interview segment in a 9:33 feature exclusive to this Criterion DVD. Recorded in summer 2000, he provides a nice amount of information on how he met Spike Lee, his comments on the film’s structure, the rain day sequence with Sam Jackson, and also one particularly interesting on-the-set anecdote. Very important on a technical aspect, but also important because I liked the basic friendship with Lee that Brown describes. The interview is divided into four helpful subdivisions.

Another exclusive bonus to this DVD not on the original laserdisc is an archival 42 minutes of material taped from the 1989 Cannes Film Festival press conference (with chapter index). Spike & Joie Lee, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Richard Edson were there to answer the many questions from the reporters, yet the most of them were directed towards and answered by Spike Lee. They had to get translators for the foreign reporters, and their questions are helpfully subtitled so that we hear the responses precisely.

Many of the questions (raised by arrogant French reporters) directed relate to racial themes, the use of Public Enemy songs and the overall on-set atmosphere, and are no different than the hypocritical critical viewpoints of the time. Although I heard the four actors get in a decent share of comments (with Ossie Davis giving a memorable response on how New York could be saved by filmmakers), it’s more or less Spike Lee who gets in the most words. Expect to hear Spike Lee comment on the racial flipside of the Sal character, the vicious circle of self defense, the referencing of Malcom X and MLK, and even goes for Ed Koch at one point. Spike Lee doesn’t get overboard in his comments, but speaks his mind and unleashes plenty of strong, ingenious opinions and rebuttals that show that he knows more about his film than anybody else in that audience. It gives you a hint at all the bullsh*t Spike was forced to take at the time this film was released.

We also get the film’s original theatrical trailer and 2 TV spots. Last is the 7:12 music video for Public Enemy’s "Fight The Power," directed by Spike Lee, who introduces the clip by explaining about his involvement with Chuck D, as well as some general information on the video. The video is suitably militant styled, with the rap legends live in front of a crowd in protest. This is the song that rekindled my interest in Public Enemy, and God bless them.

The DVD comes complete with the usual booklet containing credits, chapter titles and color photos. In this one, you get an essay from perhaps the film’s biggest fan on the critical circuit: Chicago film critic Roger Ebert, who gave this film a high thumbs up in 1989 wrote an entirely different essay on this in his book "The Great Movies." He was at Cannes when this film premiered, and I don’t think I saw him in that press conference feature on this DVD. "Perhaps I was too idealistic," Ebert mentions in his focused, intelligent comments, "but it seemed to me that any open-minded member of the audience would walk out of the movie able to understand the motivations of every character in the film-not forgive them, perhaps, but understand them."

To all those who know and appreciate good movies, I implore you this final argument: this movie shows Spike Lee at the top of his game for what many, many people have said. I also read this book by Richard Roeper, who is Ebert’s colleague in reviewing motion pictures, called "10 Sure Signs A Movie Character Is Doomed And Other Surprising Movie Lists." In his list of movies the AFI should have added to the 100 Greatest list, DO THE RIGHT THING appears there. Now would you agree with Mr. Roeper...or, if you want to make it a more common affair, would you agree with me?

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older