“He Got Game” (1998)
Shuffling things down South to Coney Island, “He Got Game” marks Denzel Washington and Spike Lee’s third collaboration (there’s been four to date). And while basketball has always been at the forefront of the the Knicks-obsessed filmmaker’s life, this soulful contemporary father-son melodrama is one of Lee’s most accessible films, dialing back any of his militant tendencies to reveal something ultimately graceful and dignified. The set-up is a little jejune — a convicted killer is let out on temporary parole with the promise of a commuted sentence by the warden if he can convince his gifted son, the top-ranked high-school basketball player in the country, into signing with the governor’s alma mater. Nevertheless, the picture makes the most of its unlikely premise and Washington has never been better as the disgraced and beleaguered father who has to trade on his dignity and scrounge for redemption while trying to make amends with his estranged daughter and son. He carries the emotional gravitas of the film and takes it with him throughout every scene that is humorous, playful, painful or heartbreaking. Lee also coerces a convincing performance out of first-time actor NBA star Ray Allen as the promising athlete Jesus Shuttlesworth; no small feat. Featuring a score composed of numerous solemn and joyous orchestral pieces by Aaron Copland (iconic works like “Fanfare for the Common Man” and vibrant cinematography by both Ellen Kuras and Malik Hassan Sayeed, “He Got Game” is not flawless (some of the slick brothers trying to hitch their ride to Jesus become a little much at times), but overall it remains one of the watershed triumphs in Lee’s oeuvre. [B+]
“Summer of Sam” (1999)
In what might be one of his most ambitious features, Spike Lee dramatizes the events surrounding the Son of Sam killings, when David Berkowitz terrorized New York City, killing six people and wounding seven more. The results are something of a mixed bag but are frequently galvanizing and always totally nuts. Since Lee is interested in the marginalia surrounding the murders, he chooses to focus on a group of Italian Americans who live in the Bronx neighborhood that Berkowitz frequented. John Leguizamo is an unfaithful hairdresser driven to madness after having a close encounter with the killer, Mira Sorvino is his doting wife, Adrien Brody is the troubled artist, and Jennifer Esposito (whatever happened to her?) is a neighborhood floozy. What could have been a tight character study, though, expands outwardly, with Lee citing just about every cultural, political, and civil issue of the summer – everything from the burgeoning punk rock scene to the 1977 blackout is given screen time. Sometimes this tips into the absurdity, like a single sequence that somehow manages to reference CBGB, Studio 54 and Plato’s Retreat. It kind of feels like a rough draft for something like David Fincher‘s brilliant “Zodiac” (with its tagline “There’s more than one way to lose your life to a killer”), except that Lee is hardly interested in the particulars of the murders. When “Summer of Sam” is “on,” it’s pretty much unstoppable – like a radio baseball play that plays over one of the killer’s attempted murders, or a wordless sequence set to The Who‘s “Baba O’Riley” (Lee uses music brilliantly, including a climax staged to Thelma Houston‘s “Don’t Leave Me This Way”). The problem is, pound for pound, there’s as much unnecessary bullshit as there is absolute genius in “Summer of Sam,” and extraneous plot threads like Adrien Brody’s career as a gay S&M dancer or Ben Gazzara’s mob boss going on a renegade hunt for the killer, bloat an already ungainly narrative. Still, for pure chutzpah, it’s hard not to love “Summer of Sam,” even when you hate it. [B] “Bamboozled” (2000)
Just last month Entertainment Weekly film critic Owen Gleiberman, who initially (and favorably) compared the film to Oliver Stone‘s splatter-satire “Natural Born Killers,” was calling “Bamboozled” (which was largely panned upon its initial release), “Spike Lee’s most misunderstood film.” And while there are a thousand interesting ideas in the film – about a straight-laced TV executive (Damon Wayans) who creates a new minstrel show that ends up becoming a sensation – few of them actually gel. Instead, what we get is a gritty-looking experiment (it was shot on crummy digital video and slightly less crummy super 16 mm), loaded with a fine supporting cast (including Tommy Davidson, Savion Glover, Jada Pinkett Smith, Michael Rapaport, Mos Def, and Paul Mooney), and a message that often becomes unbearably heavy handed, especially when the movie becomes painfully overwrought (and violent) in the last act, culminating in an epic montage of racist imagery from various sources – everything from “Gone with the Wind” to “Our Gang” shorts. (Yes, this is actually how Lee chooses to end the film.) At 135 minutes, it’s way too long, and what could have been a lively, spritely satire for the new media age, instead gets bogged down with grim violence and repetitive symbolism. For a supposed comedy, it takes itself awfully seriously. [C]
“25th Hour” (2002)
Overlooked during its day, and buried by Touchstone Pictures after it failed to earn any Golden Globes nominations (they figured Oscars had no chance either), if there is a Spike Lee film that demands reconsideration it is certainly “The 25th Hour,” a mature, angry, melancholic and soulful near-masterpiece. Starring Edward Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Pepper, Rosario Dawson, Anna Paquin and Brian Cox, and set during the last 24 hours of freedom before its protagonist (Norton) goes away to prison for dealing drugs, “The 25th Hour” may be one of the greatest post-9/11 pictures because the drama rarely touches upon the tragedy specifically. Instead, a doleful and subtle polish of pain, anguish and suffering covers the film like scattered ashes. Sober, mournful and meditative, the film also centers on regret and redemption while effortlessly weaving in themes of trust, paranoia, friendship, love, anger (see the brilliant “Fuck You, New York” monologue) and reconciliation. To boot, composer Terence Blanchard (Lee’s go-to composer and ace in the hole) delivers a deeply moving and elegiac score that is his finest work outside of the equally lugubrious ‘Levees Broke’ requiem while Mexican cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto gives the picture some of that hot, popping, almost over-exposed attention that Lee loves so much. Aside from the righteous indignation and sorrow of “When the Levees Broke” and the sweaty confused rage of “Do The Right Thing,” “The 25th Hour” is easily Lee’s most emotionally rich and textured film. Additionally, this powerful drama is not only a great American picture, it’s one of the great films about New York City, and ultimately is conflicted, but a powerful loveletter to the noisy, dirty, frustrating and exhilarating place many of us call home. [A]
“She Hate Me” (2004)
Understanding the title of Lee’s largely insane epic of 2004 goes a long way towards understanding where Lee exists as a filmmaker. It’s a play on the name “He Hate Me,” last seen on the back of a football jersey for the XFL, the failed football league shepherded by wrestling impresario Vince McMahon to primetime television in the early aughts. Because players were allowed to select self-created handles instead of birth names to place on the back of their jerseys, one black player decided to crystallize his entire career in badly-spoken English, proudly displaying it in the XFL’s first, highly-rated primetime game for millions to see the perceived victim complex of a professional athlete. Of course, no one remembers He Hate Me’s actual name (Rod Smart), and the XFL was a failed experiment that crashed into oblivion within a year, so pointed are Lee’s politics in this film. With suddenly unemployed John Henry Armstrong (Anthony Mackie), Lee is tackling the world of corporate whistleblowers, mirrored by cutaway flashbacks to Frank Wills (a silent Chiwetel Ejiofor), the security guard who discovered the Watergate break-in. In John Henry’s new profession, providing sperm for a string of cartoonishly seductive lesbians eager to procreate, Lee’s making a point about the inherent bias towards an unemployed black man. And in the sullying of his name during the ensuing investigation, Lee is making a point about class conflict ensuring minorities will always get steamrolled in courts by their rich white overlords. It’s a mess of classic Lee: passionately angry, slyly satirical, a tad misogynistic, completely ridiculous and never, at any moment, dull. [B-]
