Do the Right Thing

Do the Right Thing

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Movie Reviews of Do the Right Thing

Movie Review: Do The Right Thing
Summary: 5 Stars

''Do the Right Thing'' was made during the long hot summer of 1988 , shot on location in the bed sluy slums of Brooklyn New York. The special 2 disc dvd of the film revealed several details of the film which I found interesting, though not surprising which I will explain but first the plot.

Plot:

Well this is a film about racism plain and simple, however the debate seems to be which party in the film is right and which party is wrong.

Danny Aieloo plays Sal owner of Sal's Pizzaria in NY. Sal is a very proud Italian American who has had his business for over 25 yrs years with his sons Pino (John Turturo) and ML (Paul Benjamin). Sal is an oldfashioned, hard working man who makes his living of his pizzas. He does have some views, he views Italian American's as the best people around around. His son on the other hand Pino (John Turturo) can be called a racist, he views black people as ''monkey'' and ''apes'' and hates
the sight of one. His brother ML on the other hand is very tolerant of the people around him.

Sal has a worker named ''Mookie'' (Spike Lee) a somewhat deadbeat father with a loudmouth Puerto Rican girlfriend (Rosie Perez). In fact his girlfriend doesn't seem
that fond of Mookie. Mookie as it turns out like Pino has some racist views of his son, he doesn't particulary like white folks and when he brings in his black friends Radio Raseem (Bill Nun)and CoconuT sID (Frankie Faison) to stir up trouble in Sal's
pizzarria well sooner a clash of cultures will erupt in violence. However the debate is which side is right and is this really a movie about race or a movie where one race tries to impose their culture on someone else's ideals?

For instance, Sal (Aiello) does not invite Mookie's friends to the Pizzarria. He dislikes them very much. Mookie's friends equally dislike Sal because for one , he doesn't put black people on his walls, but then the questions arises. If Mookie's friends dont like Sal, why do they come to eat pizza there? Why do they time and time again impose their black culture on him? You can very much make the argument the black characters although they are trying to make out Sal as this monster racist, actually come to be the racists themselves. Sal himself almost throughout the whole movie displays no violence. He yells at these guys and tells them to leave but it never reaches an an extreme the Mookie character who by the end purposedly starts a riot. In fact there is one great where Sal tells the group that this is his place and if they don't like it they can go somehwere else, but they never do. By that alone Sal, has acted in the most nonviolent way possible and still standing up for himself and his ideals.

Before that, we see more of this bigoted racists attitude but not on Sal, but on Korean characters in the movie. During one point, a couple of black unemployed old men, start pointing several of the neighborhood Korean shops and immediately start throwing obscenities about the Korean people working in them.They never once consider the situation from the point of the Koreans,the shop is their only livelihood, but as far these racist black men go, the Koreans are taking the jobs away. It's a very stupid and racist attitude to have, even Sal's attitude never reaches that extreme.

Going back to near the end movie it's the black characters who become the aggesor such as when Radio Raseem invades Sal's pizzarria and turns his radio on loudly inside the man's shop, not only is it disrespectful, when Sal himself has said not to do it, but it's an act of aggresion, it's an antagonizing to bait other people to do the same thing and bring on harm to Sal's pizzaria.

So you can see although Spike Lee tries to make this film about race and race culture, he doesn't do a great job in that end because one side ultimately looks worse than the other. His message of trying to create an atmosphere where both blacks and whites are at fault for the disintegrating situation fall fault.

Still ''Do The Right Thing'' as flawed and misguided as it is, does bring up this topic of race relation and the wrong way of trying to reconcile a bad situation in that regard, the movie should actually be called ''Doing the Wrong Thing''.

The 2 disc dvd I saw were great providing a great variety of info on the movie such as the 60 minute documentary on the making of the film which is very intriguing. The audio commentary by Spike Lee is there too as is a ''Look Back'' 10 yrs at the events of the film, how it has somewhat affected peoples views. Overall the DVDs for the
film were great, including the music video by RunDMC ''Fight the Power'', but it wasn't something that presented anything I already didnt know.

But check out the dvds and if you don't have a copy check out the vhs as ''Do The Right Thing'' is a bit of phenomen with some important views on racism although it just doesn't present them in the best possible manner.

Summary of Do the Right Thing