With films like 'Inside Man' and the upcoming 'Selling Time', it appears as though Spike Lee is departing from his gritty streetwise films on racial prejudice, and into the pleasant commercial world of Hollywood. He stills touches upon the odd racial issue today, as is his trademark, but they seem more like mandatory inclusions than anything else, being left unexplored and unimportant. This is not saying Summer of Sam is a lecture on racism or anything (in fact, it steers away from the topic), but it fits the gritty crime-infested streets style that Lee used to do so well.

Summer of Sam brutally zooms in on an Italian-American South Bronx neighbourhood in the summer of 1977 -- the hottest summer ever, a real killer. Lee does not shy away from sex, drugs, raunchy dialogue or violence in his portrayal of the events which are based on reality of the summer nights when Sam murdered women on the streets. As the Bronx inhabitants grow anxious and suspicious of the murders, Summer of Sam focuses its story on Vinny (John Lequizamo), his marriage with Dionna (Mira Sorvino) and his friends and we see how the killings affect their lives, while plating the "Son of Sam" himself in the backseat to make room for these dynamic characters.

I can admit that there is no strong point or focus in this film, but I don't think it's entirely necessary. It's a portrayal, and a realistic one at that -- it is also a portrayal of an era, the 1970s and this is most apparent in the flashy 54-styled nightclubs that Vinny and Dionna go to. It occasionally drags on, but this is good because it emphasizes the terrible heat and anxiousness of the city, making it almost nightmarish. It is so realistic that you can almost feel the heat and dirt on your clothes as if you were right there in steaming hot New York City. I therefore feel that a great deal of praise is due to a film that succeeds in being haunting without actually dealing with the murders head-on.

8/10

It's a better movie that I'd expected, having heard that it wasn't much more than a pointless study of an Italian neighborhood in New York and that it had little to do with the fascinating and horrible Son of Sam case.

Actually, it really IS about relationships among young men and women in an Italian neighborhood in the Bronx. We see little of David Berkowitz, the serial murderer. He's in the background, a kind of hovering, invisible presence. But, his relationship to the main plot is encapsulated in an angry exchange between Vinnie (John Leguizamo) and his wife (Dionna). She's angry at his infidelity and recent looniness and he's trying desperately to explain: "Dey think Richie is da Son of Sam. It's drivin' me nuts." And she shouts: "What does THAT have to do with you ****ing Ruby?" That's pretty much it. The boys of the hood sit around in diners wondering who it is who is doing all the killing in their neighborhood. A black out adds to the confusion and hysteria. The good old boys try to make a list of possible suspects among those they happen to know. Let's see. There's Father So-and-So. Remember him? How he used to beat hell out of us? One night they stop the priest and search him and his car, meanwhile asking him to give them their blessing.

But Richie is at the head of the suspect list. He's a freaky looking guy, what with his punk hair do and his working as a stripper and hustler in a gay night club. And there's a lot of his time that he can't account for because he's so busy boffing Vinnie's wife.

Spike Lee and his two Italian-American writers have got a reasonably good handle on life in this kind of neighborhood. They nail down its good points -- if there's a blackout, a neighborhood power broker throws a block party and assigns patrols to keep potentially lethal strangers out -- and they nail down its bad points, as reflected among kids like this, say, in Howard Beach. If it's different, it's bad. The compliance is forced. The wrong haircut can win you a broken face. They get the incidentals too -- the religion that pervades everything and the precepts of which nobody bothers to follow too closely. No apologies for the vices are given. Every other word is the F word and that's okay for the guys, but the women use it all the time as well, and if that's the case, things have evolved a good deal since my youthful experiences with these kinds of folks.

The movie sometimes DOES seem to be going nowhere but it's never boring. Nothing so vivace could possible be dull. There's always somebody talking, often overlapping, even if the utterances are mostly repetitions of what someone else has just said. And there's always movement, even if it's only someone running off at the hands.

Anyway, the neighborhood portrait we get is both good and bad, a tribute to the objectivity of the writers and to Lee, and glory be to God for dappled things. A movie without a Manichaean scheme. And to top it all off, Mira Sorvino carries off the sexiest dance ever put on celluloid, including the one in "Gilda." Jimmy Breslin, the least pretentious columnist in New York, tells us about what happened in framing sequences. He's matter of fact about it all. After all, it's New York and the summer is hot.