Do The Right Thing - Wellington Film Society

Spike Lee, USA, 1989 120 minutes HD M offensive language

Thirty years on, Spike Lee’s portrait of a neighbourhood riven with racial tension and sweating in extreme heat feels far more timely than one might wish. Only the director’s second film, it established Lee as a master of the passionate polemic, someone with a keen eye for injustice and a willingness to put it front and centre of his work. This uncompromising classic also demonstrates his sense of place, character and style: the super-saturated colours and oddball characters of this Brooklyn neighbourhood are indelible. Lee creates a remarkably even-handed and nuanced portrait of the way that violence can flare, and how bigotry can build to something much worse, but even he could hardly have guessed how modern this film would feel 30 years later.
- Helen O’Hara, Time Out, July 30 2019.