“Do The Right Thing” Review
Pino (left) and Mookie engage in a discussion about race in “Do The Right Thing:” Spike Lee’s best film.
There are some films that I not only remember vividly after watching them, but I remember where I was when I first saw them. I first saw Spike Lee’s masterpiece “Do The Right Thing” a few days after my birthday in 2020 following a renewed interest in the film, and other films about racism and racial justice like “13th” and “Fruitvale Station,” following the murder of George Floyd on May 25.
While I respected Spike Lee as a filmmaker and loved several of his films, like “BlacKkKlansman, School Daze, She’s Gotta Have It and Malcolm X,” I had yet to see “Do The Right Thing” because I felt intimidated by it’s great reputation as one of the best films of all time. Upon watching the film, I was overwhelmed with emotion and touched by how the film was moving through me. “Do The Right Thing” is a masterpiece of a film that, for unfortunate reasons, has remained relevant.
Set in the real-life neighborhood of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn on the hottest day of the year, the film follows a cast of characters in the neighborhood as they interact and live life. When tensions begin to slowly build over the course of the day, an act of police brutality results in the community being shaken forever in a pattern of behavior that continues to this day.
Besides directing, writing and producing the film, Spike Lee stars in “Do The Right Thing” as Mookie, a deliverer of pizzas for Sal’s Famous Pizzeria, owned by Sal (Danny Aiello) and his two sons Pino and Vito (John Tuturro and Richard Edson). Mookie tries to be apathetic towards the block, while still maintaining good relationships with the members of the community, and has to put up with Pino’s constant racist attitude towards him and the rest of the largely black neighborhood. This results in a brilliant montage where several members of the community hurl racist slurs directly towards the camera followed by the local disc jockey (Samuel L. Jackson) telling everyone that “they need to cool that shit out.”
The entirety of the film focuses on this community with more than enough memorable characters including the friendly Da Mayor (Ossie Davis), a mentally disabled man named Smiley (Roger Guenveur Smith) who tries to show people pictures of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., a boombox blasting wanderer named Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), the all seeing Mother Sister (Ruby Dee) and Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito) who tries to organize a boycott of Sal’s Pizzeria because there’s no black people on the wall of fame, resulting in Buggin’ Out demanding that Sal put some “brothers on the wall.”
Spike Lee’s uncompromising direction results in one of the most visually stunning films of all time and comes complete with canted angles, people looking directly into the camera and heat lamps placed under the camera to further show off how hot Bed-Stuy is. This is one of those films that actually makes me sweat when watching it because of how Lee makes the environment unbelievably boiling. People are sweating, there’s colors like red and yellow everywhere and everyone is trying to keep cool whether that means eating snow-cones, taking a shower, drinking beer or opening a fire hydrant. While the film does deal with heavy subject matter, it’s wildly entertaining and Spike Lee does a good job of sucking you into the world that he knows all too well, having lived in Brooklyn for most of his life.
Lee’s father, Bill Lee, composes the score and, like Bernard Hermann’s work on “Taxi Driver,” brings jazz and eloquence to the everyday lives of New Yorkers. The music is beautiful and has a sense of tragedy to it which comes through in the climax of the film. Besides the score, the film also has several great songs including Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power” which plays several times throughout the film as the song Radio Raheem plays on his boombox and the song that Rosie Perez, who plays Mookie’s girlfriend Tina, dances to in the opening credits.
Despite being set in Brooklyn, I deeply identified so much with the sense of community that Lee creates. Many of the people in Bed-Stuy are people I know in my community and I think that’s the point. Lee wants us to feel like we belong in this community and can feel the same emotions that the characters feel. This is especially evident when Radio Raheem is murdered by the police, resulting in a riot that burns Sal’s pizzeria.
Radio Raheem’s death in the film is what causes the riot at the end of “Do The Right Thing.”
The death of Radio Raheem is the central point of the film that is still hard for me to watch because of how, despite being released over 30 years ago, these acts of police brutality still occur. This senseless act begins when Buggin’ Out, Smiley and Radio Raheem enter Sal’s blasting “Fight the Power” and demand that “brothers be put up on the wall.” After a heated exchange of words, Sal calls them the N-word, smashes the boombox and, in a metaphorical sense, destroys a part of Radio Raheem.
This results in a massive fight between everyone in the restaurant including Sal, Radio Raheem, Pino, Vito and Buggin’ Out while Mookie can only watch. When the police arrive, they break up the fight and grab Radio Raheem while one officer (Rick Aiello) puts Radio Raheem in a chokehold with a nightstick. Despite pleas from the community and even one of his fellow officers saying “That’s enough,” Radio Raheem is killed and Buggin’ Out is severely beaten by the police. And, just like George Floyd, another unarmed black man has been unjustly murdered.
After seeing the carnage and being constantly racially targeted by his coworkers, Mookie grabs a trashcan and throws it through the window of Sal’s which triggers the riot. This act is where the title of the film comes from when, earlier in the film, Da Mayor tells Mookie to “always do the right thing.” This has raised the question, “does Mookie do the right thing?” And, like most questions centered on this debate of police brutality, the answer is both simple and complicated.
In my opinion, Mookie did do the right thing because these acts of police brutality against unarmed black people have been occurring for decades and still have gone unsolved and have been met with indifference in the vast majority of these murders. As Martin Luther King Jr. said “a riot is the language of the unheard” and the people of Bed-Stuy are unheard and have just lost one of their own. While the fight needed to be broken up, as one man named ML (Paul Benjamin) says “They didn’t have to kill the boy.”
The past year has cast a light on police brutality and a cry for both police accountability and that Black Lives Matter. This has resulted in a wave of people clashing back against these protesters by saying Blue Lives Matter, which is a statement I agree with, but when we say it as a counter to protesters wanting the system of law enforcement to not target black people because of their skin color, nothing is being solved.
All people want is for the system to be fair, for good cops to be rewarded and for bad cops to be held accountable and to be rooted out before they can cause more damage. For my whole life, I’ve felt like Mookie: on the sidelines, not caring about the world around him. But now we all have to choose a side and I choose the side of love, understanding and the acknowledgement and respect for both black lives and the good cops who do good work. I don’t even hate bad cops, I just hate racism and the systems that continue to perpetrate it.
What all of this comes back to is how brilliantly Spike Lee conveys the message of police brutality. Instead of having a simple “good guy/bad guy” mentality, Spike Lee adds dimension to every character no matter their race. Because Lee also doesn’t hate people, he just hates oppression. As Roger Ebert said in his Great Films essay on the film, “He [Lee] didn’t draw lines or take sides, but simply looked with sadness at one racial flashpoint that stood for many others.” The film’s final moments feature two quotes. One is by Martin Luther King Jr. and the other is by Malcolm X:
Spike Lee chooses the end the film with words of wisdom from both Martin Luther King Jr. (Left) and Malcolm X.
"Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by destroying itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers."– Martin Luther King, Jr.
"I think there are plenty of good people in America, but there are also plenty of bad people in America and the bad ones are the ones who seem to have all the power and be in these positions to block things that you and I need. Because this is the situation, you and I have to preserve the right to do what is necessary to bring an end to that situation, and it doesn't mean that I advocate violence, but at the same time I am not against using violence in self-defense. I don't even call it violence when it's self- defense, I call it intelligence."– Malcolm X
While both of them had different worldviews, the film ends with an image of them together, united by a common cause. “Do The Right Thing” doesn’t necessarily tell us what to do, but shows us a story we’ve seen so many times in our lives and asks us “what are you going to do about it?” We can either act like everything is fine and that America can’t possibly still have racism since we elected Barack Obama twice or we can all come together, despite our different worldviews, and demand that we all form a front to fight racism.
Despite being proclaimed the best film of 1989 by both critics and audiences, the film didn’t get much recognition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, only being nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for Danny Aielo. It should have been nominated for Best Cinematography, Best Original Song, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Director and Best Picture with the whole cast having their own rights to be nominated in the acting categories.
Instead the Best Picture award went to “Driving Miss Daisy” which, despite being a good film, is a watered down film about racism compared to “Do The Right Thing.” Years later and Spike Lee still hasn’t been properly given his due and it’s going to take more than Glenn Close dancing to “Da Butt” at the most recent Oscars to make up for that (though it was a good try).
While the story is fictional, Lee was inspired to write it following the deaths of several unarmed black people in New York, to which the film is dedicated: Eleanor Bumpers, Michael Griffith, Arthur Miller Jr., Edmund Perry, Yvonne Smallwood and Michael Stewart. Nowadays, there are many more names that should be added to the list including Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd just to name a few.
“Do The Right Thing” fills me with emotion every time I see it because it reminds me of how good the world can be and how one senseless act of violence can tear the world apart. For those who have opposed the Black Lives Matter movement for whatever reason, I suggest you watch this film to give you a small piece of how people feel right now. Then turn off all electronics and sit in silence for eight minutes and 46 seconds. Then imagine someone who’s supposed to protect you has his knee on your neck. Then imagine you’re crying out for your mother. Then imagine you’re gone. Just like that. This film is full of so much power that words can’t begin to describe it. And that’s the truth, Ruth.
