We're a long way from Yankee Doodle.
Plot summary (with spoilers): We jump right in to the opening credits with Rosie Perez dancing/sparing to Public Enemy's Fight The Power, right on the street. Already I'm loving this, much to the relief of my White Liberal Guilty self. After the song, we open on Brooklyn, and meet its various inhabitants. There's Mister Senor Love Daddy, the local DJ, there's Da Mayor, the elderly drunken crank, there's Mother Sister, the put-upon object of Da Mayor's affections, there's Smiley, the mentally challenged kid always trying to sell people one of his many pictures of Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, there's Tina, the aforementioned feisty dancing Latina, there's Buggin Out, the weird looking trouble maker, there's Radio Raheem, the man with the boom box and the song "Fight the Power" on a seemingly endless loop, there's the Italian pizzeria owner Sal, and his two sons Vito and Pino, and there's Mookie, who works deliveries for Sal.
It's a heat wave. It's hot in Brooklyn. Hot hot hot. But people make do, as they always to. Da Mayor flirts with Mother Sister, and she rebuffs him with scorn. The old men sit around outside and one of them says he'd beat the crap out of Mike Tyson if he ever got the chance.
At Sal's, Pino gives Mookie crap about being lazy and Mookie gives it right back to him, bristling at the term. Vito plays peacemaker between the two.
Some local kids are enjoying their pizza. Among them is Buggin Out, who has the occasion to stare at the wall of Sal's joint and asks him why there are only Italians on the wall. How come there are no brothers on the wall? Sal's dismissive and condescending and tells him when he gets a pizzeria, he can put whoever he wants on the wall. Buggin Out points out that Sal rarely has Italian customers, so why shouldn't the wall reflect the client base? Immediately, Sal goes to a weird place and takes a bat from behind the bar and approaches Buggin Out. "You a trouble-maker?" he says threateningly. Pino gingerly takes the bat from his dad and then instructs Mookie to make Buggin Out...bug out. Buggin Out gets aggressive and annoyed and tries to enlist a boycott with the other customers. Everyone ignores him and Mookie shuffles him out the door. That's one.
We see various people trying to beat the heat, including playing in the fire hydrant water.
Mookie sees Pino be a dick to Vito and advises him to stand up for himself and not let his brother push him around. Smiley continues to bug people with his photos of MLK Jr. and Malcolm X.
Radio Raheem walks down the street with his giant boom box, blasting "Fight the Power" louder than the local Latinos can play their music. They angrily chase him off. Buggin Out goes around the hood, trying to convince people to join his boycott, and is roundly ignored.
At the pizza joint, Pino continues to tell Mookie he's lazy, and Vito sticks up for him. Vito threatens Mookie to stay out of his family's business. Mookie accuses Vito of being secretly wanting to be black. Vito responds by talking shit about Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. (Hmm...Vito has a bit of a point).
Da Mayor sits on the street corner, complaining about the noise some kids passing by are making. One of the boys turns on him, says he's a drunk and a loser, and no one respects him. Da Mayor is gobsmacked.
We're then treated a montage of characters speaking directly to the camera and spouting off crazy racial slurs against one another; black, white, Asian, Latino, etc. It's a well choreographed cavalcade of hate. These people are getting angrier. Senor Love Daddy warns everyone to chill out. It's a warning that won't be heeded.
Mookie asks Sal for his pay; Sal says he'll pay him after the shift is over tonight, if he pays him now, Mookie will disappear. Mookie's stung and says he'll remember that.
Radio Raheem strolls into Sal's joint, blasting "Fight the Power". Sal completely loses his shit and screams like crazy at Raheem, telling him to turn off the "jungle music". Raheem is shocked that the old man would speak to him that way, and eventually turns off the music and walks out. That's two.
Later, Sal and Vito discuss the future of the business. Vito wants to sell the business and get while they're ahead, and open something in "their own" neighborhood. Sal says there's too much competition there. Vito says he doesn't like being on "planet of the apes" and doesn't feel safe. Sal says he's been here 25 years and has no intention of leaving, and is very proud of his impact on the community. Smiley approaches them and tries to sell them the picture. Vito drives him away angrily, pushing him out onto the street. And that's three.
We learn Mookie is dating Tina, and has fathered a child with her. Her mother hates him, knowing he doesn't have enough money to support Tina and the baby, and Mookie knows it's true, too.
That night. Radio Raheem, Smiley, and Buggin Out meet up and bond over their shared anger at Sal and his place. They decide to make their feelings known tonight.
At Sal's, it's almost closing time, but then a quartet of teen kids show up and ask for one slice--come on, just one slice! Mookie wants to get paid and go home Tina, but Sal agrees to let them in. They grab a booth. Suddenly Buggin Out, Radio Raheem, and Smiley burst in. Raheem is of course playing his theme song on the boom box.
Sal and Vito immediately start screaming at Raheem and Buggin. They scream back. The teens and Mookie and Pino call out for reasonableness, moderation. Sal throws out a couple n bombs, because things weren't bad enough yet, and suddenly the teens are angry and in this fight, too. Everyone is screaming like fucking crazy. The two boys head over to the counter. Sal's had enough. He takes out his bat, previously seen in the first act, and smashes Radio's radio. He is now just Raheem. Dead silence. Sal tells them to leave. Instead, Raheem leans over the counter and starts choking Sal. A brawl starts up, and soon spills out into the street. Vito and Pino and Mookie try to pry Raheem off Sal, while others cheer him on. Da Mayor calls out for peace, but is ignored. The cops show up and throw Buggin in cuffs. Raheem struggles against the cops and one of them gets him in a headlock with his baton. He starts choking him. Another cop says to lay off, but the first cop ignores him. Suddenly, Raheem stops struggling. He drops to the ground. The cops, angry and scared, yell at him to get up. But he ignores them, on account of being dead. The cops hurriedly and unceremoniously scoop him up, toss him in a patrol car, and drive off. Smiley is screaming and weeping. The other people on the street, all black, lament not feeling safe in their own neighborhood. All eyes turn to Sal and his boys. They start yelling at Sal, making him the scapegoat for the actions of the police. Da Mayor steps in front of Sal and pleads with the others to calm down, to not do anything regrettable, to understand that Sal doesn't control the police. The crowd shouts him down and gets angrier. Mookie sees the crowd whip itself into a fury, all directed at Sal, and calmly walks over to a trash can, empties it, walks the can over to Sal's front window...and breaks it.
And with that, the fuse is lit. Swarms of rioters enterer the pizza place and begin smashing everything to shit. Da Mayor hustles Sal and his boys over to a safe corner. Soon a literal fuse is lit, and Sal's pizzeria goes up in flames, while the crowd chants "burn it down, burn it down!"
The firefighters and more cops show up. They demand the people disperse, but no one does. The cops warn the people to leave and when they ignore them, the hoses get turned on the people, while the pizza joint still burns. When will this fucking night be over?
Mookie sits on the curb, shell shocked.
Suddenly, Mother Sister realizes the horror of the night and begins screaming "NO! NO!" Wailing, over and over. Da Mayor tries in vain to comfort her.
Smiley enters the still burning pizzeria. Suddenly, magically, Raheem's broken and burning radio begins to once again play "Fight the Power", as we see burning pictures on the wall. Pacino. DeNiro. Sinatra. Smiley shuffles over to the wall. And puts up his picture of Martin and Malcolm.
The next day, Mister Senor Love Daddy recaps last night's events and declares today will be as hot as yesterday. Mookie goes to Sal, sitting outside his burned restaurant. Mookie asks for his money. Sal balls up five one hundred dollars and throws them in Mookie's face. I might've stuffed them down his throat. Mookie says he only owes him 250. He throws back half the money. Sal's stunned. He asks Mookie what he's going to do with himself.now. Mookie says he'll try to find a way to get paid somewhere else. Mookie walks home, strolling through the neighborhood as Mister Senor Love Daddy dedicates the next song to the late Radio Raheem, "we loved you, brother". In the end credits, we're treated to two dueling quotes. One from Martin Luther King Jr, strongly and in no uncertain terms denouncing violence in all its forms, and one from Malcolm X, winkingly suggesting that violence isn't really violence if it's in self defense.
Review: A breathtaking and compelling movie. It's stylized to an almost absurd degree, with big swooping shots, a breaking of the fourth wall, and a Batman-style slanted camera at the end, when Sal and Raheem start screaming at each other. I watched the movie the first time, furious at Mookie for betraying Sal, and then bowled over by his audacity to ask for his money the next day. But I read on wiki that many speculated that Mookie deliberately attacked the building to throw people off of attacking Sal himself. On second viewing, (I have ninety something movies to watch and I'm watching this one twice? Go figure.) I have to agree. Mookie saved Sal's life that night by sacrificing the pizzeria. It's an interesting movie, that sparks a lot of debate and brings up a lot of questions. Taking into account Spike Lee's own contentious and angry public persona is impossible to avoid as well. But, he could've made this clear cut. He could've made Sal and Pino mustache-twirling villains, just like Vito, but he didn't. He chose to make us like and identify with Sal even more than we did with Mookie. The two quotes in the end credits are maddening, though. Which position does Spike take? Both? Neither? I find his refusal to take a stand to be a weakness rather than a strength, ultimately, and prevents me from calling this a perfect film. But maybe I'll come around when I watch it a third time. Sorry Blade Runner, you had the award for best AFI Film so far, but it didn't last long.
Stars: Four and a half out of five.
Does it deserve "Best 100" status: Most decidedly, and if you disagree, you're a racist. Spike Lee says so.
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