“Do the right thing”, it is so easy to say, but it is not always easy to make the right choices in your life. There are setbacks which make it hard to make a decision, people who do not share your opinion or oppose you or you may not have what you need to achieve a goal. To occasionally make a choice that you know, deep down, is not the best in the long term, but still yielding results is tempting. But even in a situation where emotions rise, it is a challenge not to go along with it, to keep thinking. What this can lead if this doesn’t happen is something which Spike Lee shows in Do The Right Thing.
It’s a hot day in Brooklyn and the local radio presenter (Samuel L. Jackson) provides the sounds that set the tone for what’s happening in the streets and its residents. These include Mookie (Lee), who delivers pizzas for the local pizzeria run by Sal (Danny Aiello). Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) who walks around with his boombox at the highest volume all day while Public Enemy’s Fight the Power pumps through the speakers. Buggin Out (Giancarlo Esposito) is someone who can’t get past the fact that there is no Afro-American fame on the wall in the pizzeria. Da Mayor (Ossie Davis) who always seem to be drunk, but still dedicates himself to his community in the hope of making a difference. Slowly you get to know them all, the men who hang out in the streets to chat about anything and everything, the Koreans who work hard and are not treated with respect and the bond (or lack thereof) between the local residents and the police. As the day progresses, the tensions rise until eventually the boiling point is reached and everything goes wrong.
Spike Lee knows how to make films which are not only capable of visualizing social problems, but also of confronting them. You can also see that in this film, in which various characters speak directly to the camera (something that, for example, he also used effectively in The 25th Hour). Sometimes characters are exaggerated on purpose, but they always play an important role in conveying a message. Here he also shows that frustrations that may have been brewing for a while may ultimately may be the fuse for an explosion in which there is no room for communication or understanding and where mass thinking takes over. There will always be clashes between cultures and ways of thinking, but as he indicates at the end of the film with quotes from Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, it may not always be the best way to solve this with aggressive behavior. That makes it a film that is still relevant, almost 30 years later.
