The colors are crazy bright and almost overwhelmingly vivid. I'm serious, the top billed cast is longer than the number of people I've ever met. Additionally, young Samuel Jackson, then Sam, plays Mister Senor Daddy Love, the local radio DJ who runs a common thread through all the layers. With that, there are also several groups of people that come in to contribute to this crazily dense character study.
Smiley is a developmentally disabled man who travels the neighborhood selling copies of a picture of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Radio Raheem (Nunn) walks the streets with his ghetto blaster in tow, pumping out hip hop classics, and sporting fresh and brand new "LOVE" and "HATE" gold knuckle rings.
Da Mayor (Davis) is the community drunk who is at constant odds with Mother Sister (Dee), trying to win her affections with an icy and dismissive response. With that story line carrying the film as the central theme, there are a number of secondary stories that contribute to it's greater substance. While Vito has no problem with Mookie, Pino treats him with contempt and malice, resenting his presence and rejecting his attempts to make peace. Sal works with his two sons, Pino (Turturro) and Vito (Edson), and Mookie. He lives with his sister Jade (Lee's actual sister) and has a son with his girlfriend Tina (Perez). The main character, Mookie (Lee), delivers pizza for Sal's Pizzeria, the American Italian owned restaurant in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. It opens on the hottest day of the summer. This film seeks to examine the conflicts born of race in poorer neighborhoods in New York City in the late 80's. But when you introduce layer upon layer of complexity to what truly is the right thing, the decision making process becomes a bit muddy. To do the right thing is what we've always been taught. So this is me, removing my foot promptly from my mouth and placing it firmly on the ground, where it will stay. In here, I will only discuss film techniques on an artistic level. I'll leave it up to those who experience racism to tell their own story and decide what's best for themselves.
I would never presume to have any insight on this issue. I don't believe it's my place to comment. While I think it's an important discussion to have with everyone in order to break those barriers put up by racial prejudice, it doesn't really matter what I think. The most discrimination I experience stems form my being a woman, but racially, I wouldn't know my ass from a whole in the ground on the experience within that conflict. I'm going to preface this one with this thought. Starring Spike Lee, Rosie Perez, Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn, John Turturro, John Savage.
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