This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Matisse van Rossum’s review published on Letterboxd:
This review may contain spoilers.
I feel like I need to preface this by stating how I feel about Spike Lee. I'm not a fan of him as a person. I think he's self-righteous, self-important, and takes himself way too seriously. I also believe that he has an incredibly skewed sense of justice and right. All this being said, god dammit he knows how to make a good movie.
Do the Right Thing is excellent. It's funny, it's tragic, it's powerful, and it's got a special flow to it unlike any film I've ever seen. Its characters are interesting and well developed, and some manage to be simultaneously likable and loathable. But Do the Right Thing's strongest feature is its direction and cinematography. Spike Lee knows what he's doing behind the camera. His use of dynamic angles to create atmosphere and characterize his protagonists is masterful. This film has a look like no other, and it's effortless to get wrapped up in the universe and the characters. The cast is near perfect, and they make their characters believable and relatable, but I must say that the character I was least impressed by was Mookie, played by Lee himself.
But now it's time to get to the meat of Do the Right Thing: its subject matter and meaning. Spike Lee does an excellent job of exploring and defining racial tension, which has been a incredibly important issue in this country's history, and having lived in Alabama most of my life, it's an issue I have experienced myself. While Spike Lee leaves many issues ambiguous, as the credits rolled it was very clear to me where he stands on the matter. He concludes with two opposing quotes on the use of violence, the first from Martin Luther King, Jr. and the second from Malcolm X. By presenting the quote from Malcolm X last, Lee shows that he believes in the use of violence in self defense by giving X the last word, and in the film itself by having Mookie throw the trash can through the window of Sal's Famous Pizzeria following Radio Raheem's death at the hands of heavy handed white police officers. Sal had nothing to do with Raheem's death, and while the Mookie's act of starting the riot does not bother me in itself, the fact that Spike Lee believes that this was "doing the right thing" does. I believe this to be a faulty sense of justice, and that's why my problem is with Spike Lee and not with this film.
Despite what I've just said, Do the Right Thing is an excellent film and it deserves this being ended on a positive note. Whatever his politics, Spike Lee has made a very powerful, entertaining, and well executed film that deserves to be seen. It's a film I plan on watching again, not particularly because of what it represents, but because of what it does right.