#96 ‘Do the Right Thing’
Heat, Hate, and the Beautiful Fury of a System That Never Loved You Back
Do the Right Thing (1989) isn’t just a film—it’s a pressure cooker wired to blow, a day in the life of a Brooklyn block that spirals into a masterclass in racial tension, community fracture, and what happens when justice is as absent as air conditioning. Written, directed, and starred in by Spike Lee, it’s a film that refuses catharsis, sidesteps respectability politics, and burns its own questions into the screen like graffiti on a brownstone.
Set on the hottest day of the year in Bed-Stuy, the film follows Mookie (Lee), a pizza delivery guy juggling a job at Sal’s Pizzeria, a girlfriend he mostly avoids, and a community cracking under the weight of history, inequality, and 400-degree sidewalks. Everyone in the film is real—sharp, complicated, contradictory. There are no saints here, just survivors.
Sal (Danny Aiello) owns the pizzeria. His sons are casually racist in two distinct flavors: one is simmering rage, the other benign condescension. Radio Raheem blasts Public Enemy from a boombox like it’s a shield. Buggin’ Out questions why the Wall of Fame has no Black faces in a Black neighborhood. And Smiley, with his photographs of Martin and Malcolm, floats through it all like a ghost trying to be heard.
The genius of Do the Right Thing is its refusal to moralize. Spike Lee doesn’t tell you who is right. He shows you how everyone is wrong, how the system has baked injustice so deep into the bricks that people can’t help but ignite. When the violence comes, it’s inevitable—not because anyone wants it, but because this country is rigged like a matchbook in a microwave.
The climax—Raheem choked to death by cops while the block watches in horror, followed by Mookie hurling a trash can through Sal’s window—is still debated like it’s a philosophy exam. Did he do the right thing? Lee doesn’t answer. That’s the point. The question is a trap. What choices do you have when you're never meant to win in the first place?
Cinematographer Ernest Dickerson bathes the film in blistering reds and oranges, every frame sweating with tension. The camera angles are confrontational, the monologues blistering. And the editing, the music, the rhythm of it all—it’s jazz with a switchblade, lyrical and angry and utterly alive.
Let’s talk about the women. They’re there—strong, sharp, exhausted. Rosie Perez dances the opening credits into legend. Mother Sister watches her block through lace curtains with judgment and fear. Tina (Perez again) is Mookie’s girlfriend, mostly reduced to sex and sass—but at least she’s not a tragic corpse or a silent partner. Still, it’s a film about men—angry, loud, explosive men—and the women mostly endure rather than act. They carry the emotional weight while the men hurl the furniture.
But if the women don’t get equal narrative space, at least the film sees them. Unlike most “social issue” films, Do the Right Thing isn’t interested in tokenism. It’s interested in truth. And the truth is ugly, beautiful, unresolved—and still playing out on every street corner in America.
5 out of 5 melting sneakers
(One for the screenplay that cuts like a boxcutter. One for the camera that dares you to blink. One for the music that never lets you off the hook. One for the rage that feels righteous and earned. One for telling the truth—and then making you sit with it while the credits roll.)
