Review: Do The Right Thing (1989)

Time to talk Spike Lee joints again.

Lee might have finally deservedly won his Oscar last year with BlacKkKlansman, but many—including himself—have been clamouring for that since his major outing with Do the Right Thing in 1989. It’s a little film that, like a lot of his repertoire, tackles that ever pleasant and comfortable topic of race relations in the United States. So, thirty years on, let’s give it a look!

Now, it is true that the film’s main topic is just as resonant and relevant now as it was back then. The opening titles of the film are more of their time, immediately making it clear that ‘It’s the late eighties! Check out that big hair!!!!! Can you see this is the eighties?!!!!!’. Yup, we’re greeted to Rosie Perez dancing energetically through a certainly memorable opening, to Public Enemy’s ‘Fight the Power’, a song which Lee really got mileage from across the film. Imagine if he could only end up with the rights to Boy George instead.

Nevertheless, fashions aside, the setting and themes are still just as contemporary. The film focuses mostly on a young Lee himself playing Mookie, a pizza delivery guy working one very sweltering day somewhere in Brooklyn. His employer Sal, played with all the chutzpah of Danny Aielo, is just one of the people that Mookie ends up mingling with on that day. Down the road is Samuel L Jackson as a radio presenter, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee as a homeless guy and an older woman who bond as the most reasonable people around, and Bill Nunn as Radio Raheem, who apparently does nothing all day but walk around blasting Public Enemy from a stereo. I guess someone needs a hobby, and it helps Lee gets his money’s worth.

And, of course, there comes all the inner city racial strife that is aptly portrayed in this one sun-baked street. One memorable scene boils it all down in a montage of different people of different ethnicities just spouting off their prejudices; other times it’s somewhat more subtle, as Mookie coaxes Sal’s son Pino (played also very memorably by John Turturro) to reveal the doable standards in his racist outlook. Amid this all is Giancarlo Esposito as Buggin’ Out, who as his name suggests, gets riled up fairly easily about what he sees as injustices.

Now, this is where the film really gets interesting. Lee does have his own intentions he wanted to convey as he’ll tell you on the DVD commentary—but the performances and characterizations in the film are a little more open than that, at least for me. Sal, for instance, comes off somewhat amiable at times, which doesn’t seem to line up with how Lee sees him (in fact, in the original script, he does eventually reconcile with Mookie after the climax). Elsewhere, you can see Buggin’ Out as having a point as he rages over the lack of African-Americans on the pictures lining Sal’s diner, or him making something out of nothing. Mookie himself isn’t a paragon, sometimes skipping work, so in this case, it’s worth it to take the movie as it is and see how it might make you think.

That’s not say there’s no unambigiuity; as is often with Lee films, the climax takes a pretty drastic swerve from the somewhat comedic proceedings to make his position on police brutality very clear indeed. It’s a damn effective gut-punch that, unfortunately, still resonates in discussions today. Likewise, it’s made fairly clear that some characters like Pino are just simply racist—and, despite it all, Davis and Dee are the most level-headed ones, watching the day unfurl as they sit from their balconies.

I’ll also note that the cinematography is pretty nice with this flick—the colors are warm, as fitting the summer theme, and indeed, the set dressers went to the effort of adding more reds and yellows to the street they filmed on to convey that. You’ve got some nice wide shots, close-ups, and it all conveys that urban feel that gives it that extra touch of real.

All in all, Do the Right Thing was certainly that sort of unflinching look at race relations that wasn’t as common in late eighties America as it may be now. There’s lots to discuss, lots to interpret, and while Lee’s future films have had their ups and downs, this is one of his that rightly deserves its classic status. Do the right thing yourself, and check it out.