Do the Right Thing

Director Spike Lee dives head-first into a maelstrom of racial and social ills, using as his springboard the hottest day of the year on one block in Brooklyn, NY. Three businesses dominate the block: a storefront radio station, where a smooth-talkin' deejay (Samuel L. Jackson) spins the platters ...more

Provoking both substantial praise and fierce criticism for its "inflammatory" content, Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989) examined racism in all its complexity, eschewing simple answers for an ambiguous, artistically ambitious mosaic. The action is confined to one Brooklyn block on the hottest day of the summer, and the Bedford-Stuyvesant location thus becomes a multi-racial and multi-ethnic microcosm, spanning all ages and character types. The tapestry of incidents, whether humorous, ...more