1989
120 mins
Director-
Spike Lee
Starring Danny Aiello - Sal
Spike Lee - Mookie
John Turturro - Pino
Bill Nun - Radio Raheem
For
the first two thirds of the movie the plot is centered on
the daily goings on of various people in the Bedford-Stuyvesant
neighbourhood in Brooklyn on the hottest day of the year where
tensions rise until the climax of the movie. These tensions
are caused by... well, most people in the movie being racist,
with the blacks hating the Italians who own the local pizza
place and vice versa, the racist white cops and the Korean
dude who owns another shop getting abused all day.
The
mood of the film is set in stone during these first parts
and the climax that eventually comes seems inevitable. This
is helped by both the acting - there are some good performances
from Danny Aiello and John Turturro in particular - and the
way in which it is shot. The camera is often right in everyones
face and is shot in a quasi-documentary style constantly following
the action around where ever it went giving it an unpredictable
feel. The choas of the final scenes is captured perfectly.
This
is definitely a good thing from the point of view of the story
but it seemed that the story was all about people looking
for an argument and wanting things to go off in the way they
did, no one tries to put a stop to any of the bad feeling
that exists, they just accept it and most of the time add
to it. But alas I think this is exactly what Mr Lee was looking
for. He made the points that he wanted to make with Do The
Right Thing, whether you agree with him is a whole other matter.
BBM
BBM
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