review on Spike Lee's movie- Do the right thing!

When I watched the Spike Lee movie, Do the right thing, I definitely wasn’t expecting anything different. Well let me inform you that I already watched another one of his movies, Bamboozled, in one of my friend/professors class and after watching that movie, I was pretty prepared for something similar and I wasn’t completely shocked or taken by surprise at the intensity of the movie even though there were moments. I really liked this movie because it was challenging to me.

The movie revolves around Mookie, a young black man who works at for Sal along with his two sons at a Pizzeria. As Mookie performs the activities that make up his day we see how other characters influence him along the way and how they are all connected together and their relationships with each other. As the movie continues we see how race plays a big factor in their lives and their own views of the people of different races they interact with that day.

Another thing I like about the characters is their uniqueness and the role they play in their movies. The three middle aged men I feel dealt with tension relief as they had many funny things to say, even though some of their comments were very thought provoking. The use of stereotypes was drastically increased in this movie and it was hilarious at times but sometimes kind of going a bit far, something Lee loves to do. For example Sal, Pino and Vito always use a lot of expression using their hands and Tina always has the characteristic head shake and attitude and accent of a Latino woman. Let’s not even start with Sonny and Kim.

I don’t think the movie had the typical kind of plot that people judge movies by. It’s hard to explain but I think Lee focuses more on themes than an actual solid plot. A lot of the scenes in the movie might be called random to some critics but I think they all played a part. I feel that Lee just went to a normal street in a black neighborhood that had some Asians, whites and Latinos and just filmed scenes of daily life activities but just pumped it up with racial tension, anger, sadness, humor and violence. I feel the movie relates more to the daily life of the audience a lot more than the typical movie that comes out because it blatantly addresses issues that we try and avoid today and he puts it out in the open and leaves us to decide what to do with it.

I actually like the cinematography of this movie. I like the colors used in the movie. There was a lot of soft lighting used whenever they were inside which made the rooms have this jazzy soft sultry feeling to it. The cinematographer used a lot of orange and a lot of the scenes had beige like gold tint to it which was really cool. We could tell when the sun came up and when the sun came down because it would get really orangish. The camera angles were pretty cool too but I will talk about that in my next blog so don’t worry, just stay tuned.