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A 1989 American comedy-drama film by Spike Lee about racial tension and violence in a Brooklyn neighborhood. The film explores the characters, conflicts and consequences of a hot summer's day, and features a famous scene of a police officer choking a Black man to death.
Do the Right Thing: Directed by Spike Lee. With Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson. On the hottest day of the year on a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, everyone's hate and bigotry smolders and builds until it explodes into violence.
- (114K)
- Comedy, Drama
- Spike Lee
- 1989-07-21
A classic pioneering movie that showed the world what Spike Lee can do. On the hottest day of the year on a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brook...
- 2 min
- 352K
- thecultbox
- Overview
- Background
- Plot and characters
- Reception and legacy
Do the Right Thing, comedy-drama film, released in 1989, that focuses on the racial tensions in a neighborhood in New York City as they come to a head on the hottest day of the year. The acclaimed yet controversial film was written and directed by Spike Lee and was nominated for two Academy Awards. It is included on the American Film Institute’s li...
Do the Right Thing is Spike Lee’s third feature-length film, following the romantic comedy She’s Gotta Have It (1986) and the comedy musical School Daze (1988). Though Do the Right Thing also has moments of humor, it reaches a tragic climax involving the killing of a young Black man by a white police officer. In writing the film, Lee was inspired by the deaths of several Black citizens in New York City in the 1970s and ’80s. One particularly notorious incident of racial violence resulted in the death of Michael Griffith, who was killed at Howard Beach in Queens in 1986. Griffith and two friends had been seeking help at a pizzeria in a predominantly Italian American neighborhood after their car broke down one night, and they were ambushed by a group of white teenagers. While trying to escape the mob, Griffith was chased out onto a highway and killed by an oncoming car.
Another incident of racial violence that inspired the film was the 1983 death of Michael Stewart, a young graffiti artist who had been arrested after “tagging” a subway wall. Witnesses to his arrest later said that he had been beaten and choked by police officers, first outside the subway station and then outside the police station where he had been taken. Next the police delivered him to a hospital, where he was observed to be comatose. Stewart died there 13 days later, having never awakened from his coma. (See also police brutality in the United States.)
Cast
•Danny Aiello (Sal)
•Ossie Davis (Da Mayor)
•Ruby Dee (Mother Sister)
•Richard Edson (Vito)
•Giancarlo Esposito (Buggin Out)
Production credits and notes
•Studio: 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks
•Director and screenplay: Spike Lee
•Music: Bill Lee
•Cinematography: Ernest R. Dickerson
•Editing: Barry Alexander Brown
Do the Right Thing. Salvatore "Sal" Fragione (Danny Aiello) is the Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn. A neighborhood local, Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito), becomes upset when he sees that...
- (110)
- Spike Lee
- R
- Danny Aiello
May 27, 2001 · A classic movie about race and racism in America, directed by Spike Lee and starring Danny Aiello, Bill Nunn and Rosie Perez. Roger Ebert praises the film's style, humor, empathy and sadness, and asks: Why can't we eat pizza and run our businesses and not let racism colonize our minds?
A film about race, violence, and social justice in Brooklyn, directed by Spike Lee and featuring a stellar cast. Watch the film, listen to the commentary, and explore the extras on this two-disc Blu-ray edition.
