SUMMER OF SAM
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: New York City, the summer 1977, the
local Son of Sam killings hang over everybody's
lives in the Italian-American community. But this
story is really about popular hairdresser Vinny and
little his betrayals of his best friend and his
wife. The climate of paranoia from the killings
will only bring out the worst in Vinny. Spike
Lee's portrayal of Italian-Americans is just about
like it has been in films likes like DO THE RIGHT
THING, in such a big dose it looks a lot like
racism. Rating: 5 (0 to 10), high 0 (-4 to +4)
Spike Lee co-produces and co-directs this story of a group of people living in Bedford Stuyvesant section of New York. The film is not really about the Son of Sam murders themselves but about the atmosphere of dread created by the killings. Central to the story is Vinny the hairdresser (played by John Leguizamo), his wife Dionna (Mira Sorvino), and Vinny's boyhood friend Ritchie (Adrien Brody). Vinny is flashy and flamboyant, a local favorite in the club disco scene. Vinny is living the life of easy sex, illegal drugs, loud music, and too much drinking. His wife dotes on him but admits to herself that she somehow failing to satisfy him and is disappointing him. Ritchie has affected a British punk hairstyle and a phony British accent. Most people in the neighborhood cannot understand what Ritchie is doing but Vinny defends his friend.
Meanwhile the paranoia over the killings is getting to the neighborhood. There is a general assumption that the Son of Sam is someone from the neighborhood and someone they all know. With the tacit approval of the police vigilante groups form to try to track down whoever is doing the killing. In a witch hunt atmosphere anyone who seems out of the ordinary, even ball-player Reggie Jackson, can be suspect. All the while we see little bits of the Son of Sam himself living in torment from his personal demons then striking like some Angel of Death. He is just tangential to the story but hangs over all that goes on.
Spike Lee has structured the film a lot like his DO THE RIGHT THING. There is a violent incident toward the end of the film and virtually every scene is buildup to this moment of violence. In DO THE RIGHT THING; however, it was a mystery where the story was going. In SUMMER OF SAM it is very obvious what is going to happen and the viewer is left to wonder only how long it will take and how will it happen. The answer the second question is "longer than you think." Until then you will be putting in a lot of time with some generally unpleasant people. Lee orchestrates all this with the music of the summer of 1997. He uses the time-tested but hardly original technique of creating period feel by just finding out what the popular songs stations were playing and salting them all over the soundtrack. Sex in the film is kept frequent, explicit, but using camera angles so that little explicit is shown to the audience.
What is disturbing is that Spike Lee's view of the Italian Americans in this part of New York is not very deep. If it is beyond stereotype, it is not by much. His portrayal is certainly not very pleasant or understanding. Lee has, in the past, accused other filmmakers of using stereotypes. But it may well instead be a result of just the same sort of rushed and poorly observed writing that is starting to appear in his own work. In fact there have always been unflattering portraits of non-blacks that he has not written well and which do not fall far beyond the stereotypical. During the film he complains about a double standards toward blacks, but he himself would complain if another film had black characters so poorly characterized.
The paranoiac aspects of the film and a good and sympathetic performance by Mira Sorvino make this otherwise wandering and pointlessly over-long film considerably more watchable than it would be otherwise. And as with DO THE RIGHT THING we do see a good, credible build of events that make an unthinkable incident believable. I give SUMMER OF SAM a 5 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high 0 on the -4 to +4 scale. Gee, a film about the summer of 1977 and not one mention of STAR WARS.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1999 Mark R. Leeper
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