Summer of Sam Review

It`s the summer of 1977 and a serial killer is on the loose in New York.... he`s the Son of Sam (David Berkowitz) who is currently serving several life sentences. But Sam is not the central focus of this movie, the impact of his acts on a Bronx Italian-American community are. It`s the era of disco, and Vinny (John Leguizamo) is able to strike a pose on the dance floor with his wife Dionna ( Mira Sorvino).The fact that Vinny is unable to be faithful to his madonna-wife and is continually being lured to the whore Gloria (Bebe Neuwirth) causes him grief when he thinks that God is trying to tell him something when he accidentally stumbles on some of the victims... but his loyalty is put to a truly telling test when his boyhood friend Ritchie (Adrien Brophy) begins to sport a punk hairdo and other unsavoury aspects to his character...What Spike Lee does with Summer of Sam is create a mood, a scene, an atmosphere, a time that has a reality to it... he`s able, working for the first time outside an Afro-American context, to bring the same measure of humanity, of injustice, without it seeming like a lecture. Of course it is a moral tale, but his filmmaking skills have rarely been so astutely used in creating a visceral reality, that draws us by our guts into the world of Vinny and Ritchie and Dionna and the murderer who will have such an impact on their lives. Working for the first time with cinematographer Ellen Kuras Lee makes us feel the heat, the frustration, the sexual tension of the times, and of course, the sense of a small community which deals with fear by victimising an outsider... the use of music is masterful, the editing by Barry Alexander Brown just enhances Lee`s visual and story telling skills. I wasn`t a major fan of Spike Lee as a filmmaker... I am with this film.David`s Comments: The first film Spike Lee has made which doesn`t centre on African-Americans, but the theme is still the same - prejudice. This is his best film since Do the Right Thing, which it resembles (hot summer in the city, boiling tensions). Not so much a film about the notorious serial killer, as a film about a community sent apart by mistrust. Uniformly fine performances, intelligent direction - a fine film.