Has he lost his mind? Has Spike Lee lost all sense of reason or purpose in making a film? After the greatness of a disturbing, provocative documentary like "Four Little Girls," Spike made a noisy, pretentious, overheated basketball drama called "He Got Game." Its chief merit was Denzel Washington's controlled performance. Now we have the noisy, melodramatic, overheated, overbaked and needless retelling of the "Summer of Sam" - a hot, noisy New York summer of 1978 when the Son of Sam killer was loose in the streets and made media headlines. I assume the latter is Spike Lee's intention as well with each film he makes.
Make no mistake, "Summer of Sam" is not an introspective character study of Samuel Berkowitz. Instead, the writers Michael Imperioli, Victor Collichio and Spike focus on the sweltering summer itself - the paranoia and the decadence that surrounded the frenzy of Sam's murderous rampages on the city of New York. For a while, "Summer of Sam" works and keeps us on guard. We see the local Italian gangs rallying against Sam by keeping track of everyone who comes and goes in the neighborhood, the brunettes wearing blonde wigs to escape Sam's wrath upon blondes, the all-night disco clubs, the promiscuous activities at Plato's Retreat, an orgy club, the swagger and sweat of the macho, sexist Italian men, the constant hurling insults, the cops vying for a local Mafia boss (Ben Gazzara) to help in the murder investigation, and...wait a second. I know where I have seen this type of anthropological view of New York's boroughs before. I've seen it in Martin Scorsese's mob dramas, and I could not wait to see one of those films again as opposed to Spike's stereotypical portrayal.
The main story in "Summer of Sam" deals with the rocky relationship between the endlessly posturing Vinny (John Leguizamo), a hairdresser, and his darling, faithful wife, Dionna (Mira Sorvino), a waitress at her father's restaurant. Vinny is a philanderer and unfaithful - he will have sex with anything that crosses his path. After witnessing one of Sam's murder victims, he decides to mend his sinful ways, though it is short-lived since we are treated to a needlessly long sequence involving the infamous Plato's Retreat.
The most interesting characters in this overlong effort are the punk rocker, Ritchie (Adrien Brody), who sports a thick British accent, and his sexy girlfriend, Ruby (Jennifer Esposito) - their scenes are electrifying and stimulate the senses. I wish Spike focused on this couple since their scenes have no clichés and rivet our attention. In marked contrast, the Vinny and Dionna marriage becomes repetitious and tiresome after a while, and the actors bring no dimension or spin to their characters. There is only so much of Leguizamo's swagger I can stand.
There are a couple of sequences that do work mainly because they involve the racial parameters of a community - Lee's forte ever since "Do the Right Thing." There's a sequence involving the Mafia boss talking to the police officers about trapping Sam, and the boss rightly pointing out that there are murders in Harlem every day and nobody reports them. I also like the subplot where the gang is convinced that Ritchie is Sam because of his deviant activities, such as his nightly gay dancing and punk rock sensibilities (he also lives in a garage). The idea of needing a scapegoat in a community that is lost with desperation to find the killer is timely and profound - this is all pure vintage Lee.
Beyond that, we get heated scenes of marital discord, hurling obscenities (Joe Pesci was never this obscene), and countless scenes of burly Sam roaring with pain in his bedroom and close-ups of his shoes pounding the pavement as he approaches his victims seated in parked cars. Since the film is not truly about Sam Berkowitz, do we need countless shots of gunfire? Do we need to see a ludicrous scene of a dog speaking to Sam? Has Spike Lee become too literal-minded? Has he forgotten how to draw insight from his characters?
In terms of visceral filmmaking, Spike Lee is still a demon of a filmmaker, but he is no visionary. The film is exceedingly well-shot and edited (many high-contrast shots; delirious montages) but it all serves little purpose, meaning or significance. What we learn about the fervent summer of 1978 is that there were power outages, the weather was hot and humid, and people cursed and had sexual escapades. Spike has forgotten how to do the right thing within all the madness - to forge drama and insight from it all..
For more reviews, check out JERRY AT THE MOVIES at http://buffs.moviething.com/buffs/faust/
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