Do the Right Thing (1989)
Fight The Powers That Be…
With most movies, the review is already half-written in my head before the final credits.
I had to walk around the block, play with my dogs, and walk again before I could get my mind around how I felt after watching Do the Right Thing. Much respect to director Spike Lee for that.
So what is this movie about?
The short version is that it is a picture of a hot day on a block in Brooklyn. The neighborhood is largely African-American, but it is really a melting pot, with a Korean grocery store on the corner, Puerto Rican kids sitting on the stoop, a genuine 1980s Anglo-Yuppie, predominantly White cops, and Sal’s Famous Pizza.
Keep the melting pot image in mind because Lee uses that metaphor a lot: a melting pot…a covered pot…a closed oven…a pressure cooker. Just the right amount of heat and you can create something beautiful. Too much and you get an explosion. Do the Right Thing is about that tension.
The story centers on Mookie (Spike Lee), who delivers pizzas for Sal (Danny Aiello, most recently in the 2019 Making a Deal with the Devil…also a great flick). Mookie is not always the most responsible guy, but he is serious, likable, and usually seems to try to do the right thing. He and his girlfriend (played by Rosie Perez - who I have crushed on for about 30 years) have a son, Hector, who Mookie seems committed to. All-in-all a pretty good guy.
His boss, Sal, has run his pizza place in the neighborhood for decades and clearly loves the block and its people. One of the film’s most touching moments comes when he tries to explain to his sons why he can’t leave: “I watched these little kids get old. And I seen the old people get older…. for Christ's sake, Pino, they grew up on my food. On my food. And I'm very proud of that.”
Tensions begin to rise over the course of the day. Lee is masterful in building a sense of impending doom. You don’t know when it will come. You don’t know how it will appear. But you know it won’t end well.
And it doesn’t.
We won’t give away more than that.
Lee was solid as an actor and superb as the director of a very nuanced story. And the film is full of talent, although some were so young when the movie was made it takes you a minute to recognize them. Who? Samuel L. Jackson (see our recent Django Unchained write-up), the lovely Rosie Perez, John Turturro (The Plot Against America), John Savage (The Deer Hunter), Martin Lawrence, Luis Antonio Ramos, Leonard Thomas (This is Us), and more - as well as American treasures Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee.
The strongest endorsement I can give this movie - beyond saying it made me think - is that it made me feel.
I was living in Los Angeles in April of 1991 when citywide rioting broke out following the acquittal of police officers charged with the beating of Rodney King. Do The Right Thing predated those riots…but the tension, anger, frustration, and fear felt by everyone who experienced that time was the same as that in the film. Watching it brought me back to days of looking at smoke filling the skies over the center of the city, driving into Compton the morning after the initial fighting to help a friend pick up her mother and bring her to the relative security of Anaheim, and hard conversations with friends of all backgrounds about whether there was an answer to Rodney King’s question “can we all get along?”
Bravo.
You can catch Do the Right Thing HERE.
Five out of Five Boomboxes.
📻📻📻📻📻
Down with DTRT? You might want to check out one of these.
