Opening Statement

With Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee packed color and fury into a solid two-hour punch that knocked me off my feet and left my eyes open wide. Lee exposes a slice of American life in a way that is rife with humor, though that softens none of the ugly realities it exposes – by Sarah Gorr, April 24, 2017

Radio Raheem, Trayvon Martin & Black Lives Matter

Before there was Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, and Philando Castile, there were other names ringing out across the country: Eleanor Bumpurs, Michael Griffith, Arthur MIller, Edmund Perry, Yvonne Smallwood, and Michael Stewart. Is it any wonder then that Do the Right Thing, the cinematic representation of New York’s fiery racial tensions, was born out of these years? – by Sarah Gorr, April 25, 2017

A One Dimensional Portrayal of Women

There should be a word for fighting one kind of prejudice while simultaneously engaging in another kind of prejudice, and being totally blind to that fact. If there was such a word, in the dictionary next to the definition would be a picture of the opening credits of Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing – by Felicia Elliott, April 26, 2017

Scenessential: Love and Hate

The speech is designed to shape our understanding of Radio Raheem through the rest of the film, the importance of which frames the climactic scene of his death and the immediate aftermath. Mookie’s interactions with the rest of the neighborhood have little impact on the plot up until that point, and his actions can be traced directly to the speech that Raheem gave him about Love and Hate – by Kevin Taylor, April 27, 2017

Related Review: Red Hook Summer

The time seems ripe to revisit the world of Do the Right Thing with both the heightened racial divide and demographic changes in mind, right? Well, you may not have recognized that Lee has already done so. Sorta – by Aaron Pinkston, April 28, 2017