Well overdue, Spike's winning look at inter-racial interactions on a hot day in Brooklyn is still as timely as ever, and quite inventive cinematically (long camera tracks, to-camera moments, long takes).
Well photographed by Ernest Dickerson, who gives it a colourful feeling.
Spike plays the pizza delivery guy Mookie, and central to all this is the Pizza owner Danny Aiello, who displays mixed feelings about the people he's with, as enunciated in very long single take track in when he talks to elder son John Turturro (who's clear about his feelings - they shouldn't be there). Beat box man Bill Nunn and Giancarlo Esposito feel militant and start all the bother. Ossie Davis attempts to keep calm. Ruby Dee is 'Mother Sister'. With Rosie Perez, Joie Lee...
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| ...Paul Benjamin, Frankie Faison, Robin Harris |
Did note the 'right hand left hand' reference. The moments of humour are welcome, as are the Martin Luther King and Malcolm X quotes.
End credit for the families of.. is sobering. They are Eleanor Bumpers / Bumpurs (shot by police), Michael Griffith (beaten to death by white gang), Arthur Miller (choked to death by police), Edmund Perry (killed by policeman), Yvonne Smallwood (beaten and died in prison), Michael Stewart (graffiti artist beaten to death by police).
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