Review of Do the Right Thing (96)

Sure, we watched this movie about three weeks ago, but it's better late than never to write our review.

Plot
It's the hottest day of the year in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, and tensions are growing there, with the only local businesses being a Korean grocery and Sal's Pizzeria. Mookie, Sal's delivery boy, manages to always be at the center of the action.

Jason's Thoughts
I remember watching this movie as a young teenager, however, it didn’t quite have the same impact on me as it did when I watched it 15 years later. At any rate, I think it is safe to say that Billy Joel didn’t walk through this neighborhood alone on this summer day.

On the surface, Do the Right Thing is about racial tensions that build up and boil over on the hottest day of the year, but it’s not that simple either. What I love about this movie is the fact that there isn’t one particular bad person you are forced to hate. What you do have is a mix of likeable characters all doing what they believe is the “right thing.”

Mookie’s friend trying to organize a boycott of Sal’s Pizzeria, Sal smashing Radio Raheem’s boom box with a baseball bat after repeated attempts of telling him to turn it off, the police trying to restore order and choking the life out of Raheem, and even Mookie tossing a garbage can though the window of his workplace can all be attributed to that character doing what they felt was the “right thing” at that moment.

Does it mean it was the right thing to do? That all depends on how you look at it, but I find it hard to point fingers and blame any one person for the events that transpired. The boycott was the source of the friction and could have been easily resolved. Instead, there was no compromise and the series of events that would follow would cause one person to be killed and another to lose his livelihood. All because they stood up for what they believed in and what they thought was right, which in the end probably wasn’t the right thing to do at all, instead of working together on a solution.

My one complaint with the movie was that it seemed to get off track at times. A few scenes seemed to be there just to fill time, while others tended to drag on a bit. Had some of the unnecessary footage been left on the editing room floor, I could have easily given this movie a perfect 5-star rating. I will say, however, that this was the first movie that truly seemed like it deserved to be included as one of the greatest of all time.

Crystal’s Thoughts
My husband commented to me per my last review that I was being a bit harsh on these movies. So, to Blade Runner, I apologize. And for the upcoming movies, I'll try to find at least one positive aspect.

Turning to Do the Right Thing, this movie was very powerful and per its racial tension plot, deserves to have made the AFI top 100 movie list. While I have not seen a lot of movies of its time or prior to it, I do believe this was one of the first attempts to show the "black" point of view. I will admit, this movie brought out of bit of racial feelings in me. It was very sad to see Mookie and his friends retaliate to the point of completely destroying Sal's Pizzeria. Yes, they did believe they were doing the right thing, but I cannot help questioning it. Didn't anyone stop to think that Sal himself was part of a race that was shunned upon too? Sal was of Italian decent. He and his family did not fit into the perfect white American cut out either. Just like the Asian couple who ran the convenient store did not fit in either. It was a sad sight to see Mookie and Raheem and the other African-American kids treat race in the way that they wanted to separate themselves from. Had they viewed it as instead the melting pot it was, a lot of the tensions could have been calmed. And they'd still be eating at Sal's.

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