Vinnie (Leguizamo) is married to Dionna (Sorvino), but can’t stop cheating on her.
They appear content at the outset, but Vinnie is a man deeply afflicted by
temptation, full of guilt and very, very unhappy. Dionna looks the other way and
even tries to illicit her husband’s fantasies from other women he’s been with in
order to please him.

Then there are the neighborhood drug dealers, assorted hoodlums enacting assorted
Italian stereotypes. The head honcho of the neighborhood, Luigi (Gazzara), is a
traditional man, intelligent and hell-bent on capturing the Son of Sam. When he sits
down to eat with the head detectives assigned to the case, one of which grew up in
the neighborhood (LaPaglia), the scene is satisfying : cops and crooks putting aside
their differences to fight a greater cause.

Finally, there’s Ritchie (Brody), a free spirit who has just returned to the
neighborhood. He’s dressed as the classic 70’s punk rocker : spiked hair, union
jack shirt, chains and leather. He even attempts a bad british accent when he first
appears. He’s a sore thumb among the conventional Italian-American guys and
they can’t stop busting his balls. He’s like an open-minded antidote for this
neighborhood that’s slowly spilling into the gutter.

All these sharply-drawn characters (and many, many more) contribute to what is,
essentially, a collage on film, an epic film reduced to highlights. The compromise
we see on the screen may be overlong and have one too many sequences of Vinnie
and Dionna fighting, but it’s so well-rendered, so meticulously captured - we can’t
look away. The way Spike draws his dark parallel between the Son of Sam and the
flawed individuals living in this film’s world is marvelous.

The movie contains two blistering montages, each of which put the whole film in
perspective. If the movie is highlights of an epic (that exists only in my fantasy
world), the montages are the highlights of the movie, spelling it’s energy and
politics out in short, loud bursts. The first, set to The Who’s "Baba O’Reilly",
shows the neighborhood’s first total reaction to the return of Sam (who spaced out
his killings greatly). The second is also set to a Who song, "Won’t Get Fooled
Again", loudly exploding over the soundtrack as Sam is caught and Ritchie is
targeted. This second montage brings us back to Lee’s previous style, the one
exacted in full force in ‘Do The Right Thing’, considered by some his best work
(‘Clockers’, for me, is Lee’s masterwork). ‘Summer of Sam’ is old school Spike
dressed in his newer visual style (the saturated colors, slanty angles and extensive
set-ups). It’s gritty, violent and full-figured, allowing for the personalities of every
character in the film, the ones they’re born with and the ones the world assigns to
them, to come to blows.

Spike Lee is not always a popular filmmaker. He’s considered somewhat militant,
always controversial and terribly self-indulgent. I’ve never take that away from any
of his films and I try not to take any of that type of baggage into his films. No
matter what he directs, it always piques my interest. Nevermind the types of films
he makes or the reviews he gets : isn’t it the point of a director to make films that
make the audience want to see them and then to deliver a product that keeps them
coming back for more? My personal take is that Spike gets a bad rap because of
his overactive and somewhat obnoxious comments whenever he is intereviewed.

The performances are dead-on, especially by Leguizamo, who plays Italian like he
was born in little Italy. Brody is an absolutely enticing actor, so full of anger and
passion and able to turn on a dime and play sleazy and self-righteous. He is an up
and coming actor to watch, mark my words. Sorvino and Jennifer Esposito
(Ritchie’s girlfriend) are really striking actresses. The scene where Sorvino tries to
pry Esposito into telling her Vinnie’s "sexual likes and dislikes" is tough, but it’s
one that shirks of desperation and Sorvino plays it so well. In the years following
her Oscar win for ‘Mighty Aphrodite’, she’s demonstrated that she’s no fluke and
possesses an immense amount of talent and range (check her out in ‘Sweet
Nothing’, her finest hour). Extra points for the cameos of co-writer Michael
Imperioli as Midnight, the proprietor of "Male World", a gay strip joint and to Lee
himself, as John Jeffries, the newscaster for Channel 7.

‘Summer of Sam’ is far from perfect. The film is too ambitious for it’s own good and
then doesn’t deliver. It should have been a 3 hour plus epic, but the exploration in
it’s narrative is convoluted and crammed into just under 2 and a half hours. It feels
unfinished and still somewhat soft. By the end, I had spent so much of my time
getting to know these characters, I was beginning to care about them. When Spike
pulls the plug, I leave feeling indifferent to them. My suspicion is that this was not
intentional. As invigorating and entertaining as the film was, it left me wanting so
much more. That’s just not like Spike. If we examine his opus, ‘Malcom X’,
clocking in at 3 and a half hours, you’ll see he works on a grand canvas and when
given the time to flesh out his characters, he does it like a pro and to wonderful
results.

I’m vying for a director’s cut.

(Yes! That is actor John Turturro as the voice of "Harvey the black dog", whose
constant barking drove Son of Sam to kill.)