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Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing is, 25 years after its initial release, universally accepted as many things. It’s one of the greatest movies ever made. It’s home to the coolest visual reference to Night of the Hunter in cinema history. It’s the film that ridiculously wasn’t nominated for Best Picture honors at the 1989 Academy Awards, the year in which Driving Miss friggin’ Daisy received that distinction. It’s the angry societal attack that spawned Public Enemy’s classic anti-establishment record ”Fight the Power.” And it’s the motion picture in which Giancarlo Esposito famously lashed out against a pizzeria long before he portrayed Gustavo Fring, a.k.a. the genuine “television villain” article.
Those are just a few of Do the Right Thing’s cultural touchstones—to mention them all here would be to write a college-length thesis paper. That’s what happens when a movie as exceptional and multi-faceted as Spike Lee’s slice-of-Brooklyn-life knockout endures for a quarter of a century.
Not that Do the Right Thing has evolved into a hot-button topic. After its May 1989 premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, Lee’s film quickly became a polarizing force, generating a firestorm of controversy straight into its June 30, 1989, theatrical opening. How exactly did film critics at the time react to Do the Right Thing? A mix of glowing praise and predictions of the race riots it’d potentially cause, for starters.
In the words of critical giants like David Denby, J. Hoberman, and the late Roger Ebert, here’s a sampling of Do the Right Thing’s first-ever reviews.
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The New York Times
"With Do the Right Thing, which he wrote, produced, directed and stars in, Mr. Lee emerges as the most distinctive American multi-threat man since Woody Allen... Do the Right Thing' is a big movie. Though the action is limited to one more-or-less idealized block in Bed-Stuy, the scope is panoramic. It's a contemporary 'Street Scene.' It has the heightened reality of theater, not only in its look but also in the way the lyrics of the songs on the soundtrack become natural extensions of the furiously demotic, often hugely funny dialogue." —Vincent Canby, The New York Times
Rolling Stone
"Lee has made an overtly political film in a Hollywood where those blacks who can (Eddie Murphy, Bill Cosby) don't, and those who can't but want to are forced to address the issues indirectly, through comedy (Robert Townsend's Hollywood Shuffle, Keenan Ivory Wyans's I'm Gonna Git You Sucka). These alternatives seem preferable to the insufferably noble approach of most white filmmakers. In Alan Parker's Mississippi Burning and Chris Menges's World Apart it's hard to find a black person who's not in church out singing spirituals or gathered in groups that rob them of their human diversity. Lee prudently avoids these deck-stacking traps. His black-underclass characters may be poor, unruly, uneducated and underemployed, but they are not without wit, dignity and their own slant on what it means to do the right thing." —Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
Chicago Sun-Times
"Do the Right Thing is not filled with brotherly love, but it is not filled with hate, either. It comes out of a weary, urban cynicism that has settled down around us in recent years. The good feelings and many of the hopes of the 1960s have evaporated, and today it no longer would be accurate to make a movie about how the races in American are all going to love one another. I wish we could see such love, but instead we have deepening class divisions in which the middle classes of all races flee from what's happening in the inner city, while a series of national administrations provides no hope for the poor. Do the Right Thing tells an honest, unsentimental story about those who are left behind." —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
The Village Voice
"Lee has already taken a fair amount of criticism for sanitizing his street scene. But the real issue is not the absence of drugs or street crime; the real issue is racial solidarity. No black character on this street may exploit another for economic gain. Thus, no black character can operate any sort of business or hold any real authority. No black character, save Mookie (and the ethereal Mister Señor Love Daddy), is shown to be gainfully employed. Where School Daze offered a critique of black racism and social conflict, Do the Right Thing presents no essential divisions within the black community. Discontent is signaled by the endless series of personal turf wars, the movie touching lightly on the pain in having your sense of self bound up in a pair of sneakers or a radio, the relative merits of this major league pitcher or that pop music superstar."
"Joe Klein, New York's expert on race relations, predicts that while white liberals debate Do the Right Thing's message, 'black teenagers won't find it so hard... white people are your enemy.' In spite of this hysterical accusation of cinematic wilding, it seems obvious that (1) most black teenagers don't have to see Do the Right Thing to have feelings about white people; (2) there is no monolithic, unthinking response to this film anyway; and (3) the vast majority of Lee's fans would probably rather star in his next movie than torch the bijou where it's shown." —J. Hoberman, The Village Voice
New York Magazine
"If Lee does hook large black audiences, there’s a good chance the message they take from the film will increase racial tensions in the city. If they react violently—which can’t be ruled out—the [New York City mayoral] candidate with the most to lose will be David Dinkins."
“Lee is cagey and talented, but he’s a classic art-school dilettante when it comes to politics. His film—the story of a day on the block in Bedford-Stuyvesant—is more trendoid than tragic, reflecting the latest riffs in hip black separatism rather than taking an intellectually honest look at the problems he’s nibbling around. Lee leavens the anger white audiences are likely to feel with humor, and by making Sal, the Italian pizza-store owner, a sympathetic figure. There’s an almost Dickensian quality to his sense of slum life. He creates wonderful characters who are at once simple and complicated—poignant and ridiculous, dangerous and funny.” —Joe Klein, New York
The Christian Science Monitor
"While the characters are certainly etched in bold strokes, I find most of them as fleshed out as they need be for this densely structured film. I also feel that, whatever one thinks of Do the Right Thing, one failing it can't be accused of is irrelevance. Recent news from major cities suggests that unrest is growing between blacks and whites, and that the chief causes of this friction—including poverty and commerce in drugs—are tied to the long tradition of American racism"
"This is the context of Do the Right Thing, which draws on such recent and real New York incidents as the death of a graffiti artist while in police custody and the harassment of blacks in the Howard Beach neighborhood. These direct connections with actual events are one reason why Mr. Lee's film must be heeded, even when its content may seem distasteful to some white moviegoers." —David Sterritt, The Christian Science Monitor
Chicago Reader
"Neither [She's Gotta Have It or School Daze] really prepares one for the quantum leap of Do the Right Thing, easily the best American movie released so far this year. It's virtually the only summer release to date that honors its audience by asking it to think—without for an instant relinquishing its capacity to amuse and enlighten. If, loosely speaking, She's Gotta Have It sacrificed content to style and School Daze sacrificed style to content, style and content in Do the Right Thing are joined seamlessly and effortlessly."
"Some commentators have already remarked that there are no drugs and no allusions to drugs in the film. There were also none in Lee's previous features; She's Gotta Have It even included a title at the end of its final credits: 'This film contains no jerri curls!!!! and no drugs!!!!' Lee has rightly pointed out that no one would think of criticizing a movie set on Wall Street for excluding drugs: our usual demands about 'realism' frequently have double standards and hidden agendas. (It's worth noting in passing that the film crew on Do the Right Thing managed to shut down the crack houses on the block for the eight weeks of shooting. Still, as some local residents suggest in St. Clair Bourne's excellent documentary Making Do the Right Thing, there's no reason to assume that the crack dealers wouldn't—or didn't—resume their trade after the film crew moved on.)" —Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
Los Angeles Times
"Each of Lee's films has been a progression, however nothing he has done before quite prepares us for the richness of Do the Right Thing, for the picture-puzzle interlocking of its characters, for their organic, explosive humor or for Lee's enormous assurance. It is one of those leaps that are sometimes called quantum, but may be simply the broad strides of a man born to make movies, which Lee, quite clearly was. The leap that Do the Right Thing represents from the two earlier features is roughly equivalent to the one Martin Scorsese made from Who's That Knocking on My Door? to Taxi Driver. It was only eight years in time, '68 to '76, but light-years in the director's power, his focus, his visual and story-telling sophistication."
"Scorsese? Spike Lee? The accepted comparison, I suppose, would be to Melvin Van Peebles (the early 1970's Van Peebles of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song) or to Woody Allen, for their comic stance and their work as writer-directors, or writer-director-actors. Yet there's something seditious and Scorsese-like to Do the Right Thing, something about heat and intensity and a purely New York, faintly surreal vision. And something in the beautiful camera work of Ernest Dickerson, Lee's customary cinematographer, may recall the opening of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, or moments from New York, New York." —Sheila Benson, Los Angeles Times
Washington Post
"The movie runs on emotion, a highly questionable, highly flammable power source. Lee isn't a politician, and he doesn't censor himself or make sure that he has all his ideas worked out in his head first. He just tosses them out. As a result, the film is a moral workout. At once a plea for tolerance and a rationale for violent opposition, the film embraces both its patron saints, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, then invites us to hassle out the contradictions."
"Despite the moral wobbliness, especially at the end, the film is not, as some of the advance press has suggested, an irresponsible, hysterical rant. Lee does, at times, paint with a very broad brush. Also, his eagerness to be balanced causes him to be overdeliberate in drawing his characters, and in places the actors can't rise above the script's Playhouse 90-style social consciousness. But Do the Right Thing is a movie made by filmmaker working in sync with his times—an exciting, disturbing, provocative film." —Hal Hinson, Washington Post
Newsday
"And so it turns out that Sal has been the dreamer and that Pino has been the realist, however repellent his impulses and style of argument. American artists from Mark Twain to Spike Lee have confronted the conflict between white and black for more than a century, and it would not be easy to recall many scenarios that have so heavily and pitilessly loaded the dice against the better."
"Art cannot be art unless its hero has an antagonist worthy of him. Mookie is unfit for the challenge, simply because, if Sal is not without his flaws, Mookie is without anything else. He is not just an inferior specimen of a great race but beneath the decent minimum for humankind itself. He neglects his job, his child, and its mother, and, except for mistaking Sal's clumsy kindnesses to his own hard-working sister for signs of lust, he shows no trace of feeling for any interest except his own." —Murray Kempton, Newsday
Deseret News
"As a whole the film might have achieved more depth had Lee allowed us to learn more about the background of his characters, many of whom remain mysteries to the end. On the other hand, Lee has wisely chosen excellent performers, and they bring much to their roles the script does not. What Do the Right Thing does best, however, is to show how seemingly minor incidents can pile up in a day so that an eventual confrontation, no matter how repulsive, seems not only natural but inevitable. But if Lee seems to vacillate between the non-violent teachings of Martin Luther King and the pro-violent teachings of Malcom X throughout the film, he may really confuse the audience by using polarized quotes from each of them to close his film." —Chris Hicks, Deseret News
New York
"In Do the Right Thing, filmmaker Spike Lee does the right thing, the wrong thing, and finally everything. This immensely skillful, humane, and richly detailed movie about racism in New York suffers from trying to satisfy everyone—black, white, middle-class, and 'street.' It's a comedy that ends in tragedy; a spectacle of black victimization by whites and white victimization by blacks; a demonstration of the pointlessness of violence that is also a celebration of violence. Confusing? Do the Right Thing is going to create an uproar—in part because Lee, a middle-class black hoping to capture the anger of the underclass, is thoroughly mixed up about what he's saying." —David Denby, New York
Orlando Sentinel
"For the most part, the film is a tiresome combination of sitcom and message movie—if you can imagine that. It's full of honest anger but expresses little else... Why is my view of the film a 'minority' position in the critical community? I can only speculate, of course, but I'd guess that the LA critics liked Do the Right Thing partly because filmmaker Lee, in interviews, has been openly contemptuous of Hollywood. If there's anything California critics like better than bashing the big studios, I don't know what it would be." —Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel
The Harvard Crimson
"The real tragedy in this movie is that the neighborhood Blacks see no recourse for the murder of a Black teenager by police but to destroy the only white business in the neighborhood. Their anger cannot be directed at the real source, the police, because of their powerlessness. But their frustration and anger needs to be vented in some way. The frustration of the Black community is the central topic of this film, and Lee outlines the external and internal causes of its fragmentation. The external causes—the small value placed on Black lives by police and others, the lack of economic opportunity or alternative visions—are more obvious."
"But Lee tackles the internal reasons as well—the frequency of fatherless Black children, the self-defeat of internalized racism, the misplaced hostility towards easy victims who are not the real causes of oppression, the misdirected activism towards dead-end causes. The film is far more than entertainment; it is social commentary." —Lisa A. Taggart, The Harvard Crimson