Do the Right Thing

Name: Do the Right Thing
Released: 1989-6-30
Cast: Spike Lee, Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Giancarlo Esposito

Do the Right Thing

R
1h 59m
1989

93%

age 16+

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This powerful visual feast combines humor and drama with memorable characters while tracing the course of a single day on a block in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. It's the hottest day of the year, a scorching 24-hour period that will change the lives of its residents forever. Danny Aiello co-stars in this absorbing tale of inner-city life that heats up with vivid images and unforgettable performances.

Director:

Spike Lee

Producer:

Spike Lee

Writer:

Spike Lee

Cast:

Spike Lee, Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn, John Turturro, Samuel L. Jackson, John Savage, Rosie Perez, Martin Lawrence, Richard Edson, Miguel Sandoval

Rotten Tomatoes® Score

TOMATOMETER®

93%

Critics Consensus: Smart, vibrant, and urgent without being didactic, Do the Right Thing is one of Spike Lee's most fully realized efforts -- and one of the most important films of the 1980s.

Reviews

Q Network Film Desk

James Kendrick

Lee is using violence to provoke discussion in his viewers, to drive at controversial issues that...

The many messages of the film remain widely unheeded and Do the Right Thing remains as vital and c...

A battle of two competing ideologies. It's blistering, thought-provoking and vibrant cinema.

August 22, 2019

FULL REVIEW

Battleship Pretension

David Bax

Lee is far too keyed-in to the human condition to rest on easy, lazy, "can't we all just get along...

This fierce racial drama remains Spike Lee's most assured and controversial film to date, and time...

August 5, 2019

FULL REVIEW

Common Sense Media

age 16+

Common Sense Says

Spike Lee's masterwork of racial unrest; discuss with kids.

What Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing is an intense study of racism as it existed in an urban U.S. neighborhood during the late 1980s. There are many angry racial confrontations using provocative, coarse language and highly-charged racial taunts, including constant use of "n----r." Violence realistically depicted includes: a riot, fistfights, a crowd setting fire to a restaurant, a man being choked by police using a baton. One sexual scene shows a couple during foreplay and uses extreme close-ups of a woman's body parts: her legs, her breasts, her neck. A leading character drinks beer continuously.