Do The Right Thing | Millennial Reaction 

Fantastic reaction. my takeaway from this film is: "“Be kind to people, be ruthless to systems.”

I love this film. The style of it is almost like Greek theater where you have pastiche of conversations that develop a slow burn effect and Spike Lee's style is so atmospheric you can feel the heat building where often his use of closeups on characters is almost unnatural because the characters don't just talk to each other, but like in soliloquies and asides, even Samuel L Jackson's Senior Love Daddy is the Greek Chorus, are talking to the viewing audiences as well resulting in your commentary at the finale of your reaction with "We really need to talk about this." I saw it on the big screen and you can really feel the place. Years ago, a few years after this film came out, I worked in a neighborhood in Southeast D.C. similar to the one in this filmand the tensions this film evokes were very apparent in that neighborhood at the time so for me Do the Right Thing definitely has a visceral truth about it.

As far as what you asked at the end.....how do people who saw it at the time see it today? I see it the same exact way. There has been these kinds of situations as long as I've been alive. It's gotten magnified more recently with people's cellphones but it was still something that's always gone on. Police brutality, rioting being started by seemingly small things, etc. And when I saw this movie for the first time, it gave me an experience that I myself hadn't lived through.....just like any great movie does. But it also wasn't a total surprise (but I'm a New Yorker, that might have something to do with it). As a movie, though? Aside from its sociological effects, It had two other major consequences; Spike Lee had achieved a success and profile that no other black director had gotten to previously. And it opened the door for other black film-makers (John Singleton, The Hughes Brothers). Personally, I think this is his best work; if all he ever did was this movie, we'd still be talking about him.

What a fantastic reaction to this amazing movie. Fantastic commenta ry throughout the film and afterwards. Couldn't agree more with your post film analysis, completely multi-dimensional deep dive into everything this movie is about. And also all the characters. Brilliant. They should put this reaction on the DVD.

Loved editing this and watching the movie! To answer the big question at the end, I think Mookie in a way does do the right thing. Because the next day we learn Sal has insurance and thus didnt really lose anything, he's basically getting a vacation out of this if anything. Mookie basically sacrificed his own job to redirect the mob's anger onto the restaurant and not onto Sal and his sons. Mookie basically helped the community get all their angers from the day out in a situation where he was powerless, and all he had was this built up anger and grief not just from the day already but also seeing his friend die needlessly from brutality. It was a painful situation he was in, and while he was taking his own anger out you can even see all he really does is throw the trashcan through the window, he doesnt partake in the rest. It's a difficult situation but with the added knowledge we gain from the day after of the insurance coverage, yeah ultimately Mookie helped everyone get their frustrations out so I think he did do the right thing. *We also learn in a future spike lee film that Mookie and Sal reconcile and he gets his job back so it seems even Sal came around and understood what Mookie did

I loved the passion in the rant at the end.

Turturro is a mainstay in Coen Brothers. See "Miller's Crossing" and "The Big Lebowski".

saw in theater.

This reaction was incredibly interesting! Thanks for explaining your thoughts clearly.

One of my all-time favorites!

Amazing movie and timeless classic. No person in the movie is flawless. In the buildup to the final are many micro aggressions which added until it explodes. Sal is good guy but a little bit racist. His oldes son a douchebag. The younger one more like Sal but also need to work on his racist world view. Mookie is some average guy from around the block who needs to get his life straight and grew up. Radio Rahim and Bug Out were looking for respect and appreciation but they choose wrong ways. The Major had a good hearth but a drinking problem… Many of the issues are still relevant.

I'm from London and have visited New York just one time probably six or seven years after this movie came out. I was there for a cousin's wedding, which took place during a heatwave with temperatures regularly in excess of 100 degrees. I don't mean to suggest I observed tensions anything like those depicted in this movie, which I had seen BTW, but once it had struck me that there are zero White people in Flatbush, which I believe is in Brooklyn, I then noticed that even the Black youths, who looked and dressed the same, isolated themselves in groups according to their origins. Haitians didn't mix with Nigerians who didn't mix with Jamaicans etc. So it seemed to me that there was little chance that any of them associating with Hispanics or Koreans and, like I said, there were no Whites in the equation in what was evidently a no-go area for them. Later, my cousin took out a map of the city and pointed out various districts by describing which nationality lives where and whether I would be safe there or merely attract attention. This was a shock and gave me a negative impression I've never been able to shake. If this was how America's cosmopolis organised itself, what horrors would await me in the rest of the nation? Maybe things have changed since then but, even though nothing untoward was really happening, Flatbush felt like a hell hole that could ignite at the slightest provocation. As for Sal's son's "they're not really Black" comments, this has happened to me on multiple occasions. My parents came to Britain from Jamaica in the late 1940s and were very keen for their children to be as English as possible in terms of their dialect and demeanour. We were never clear whether they considered the English to be better or they were attempting to mitigate some of the marginalisation we would inevitably suffer. Today we would quite properly resist such requirements but back then we did what our parents demanded almost before their edicts left their mouths. If we even contemplated rebellion, no helplines or social services were going to protect us from the consequences. Fast forward to early adulthood and, having only ever socialised with middle-class White kids befriended at a grammar school which admitted its first three Black kids the same year I enrolled, I subsequently found it easy to get along with co-workers in a profession where non-Whites were not well represented. Generally speaking, I enjoyed their company at and after work and they seemed to like me because, as some of them would point out in unguarded moments of alcohol induced candour, I wasn't really Black. Their opinions didn't prevent those same individuals profiling me as someone who could score them some weed or a cheap car radio however, And office Christmas parties became more of a chore than a pleasure for me once I realised half the room were waiting to replicate my dance moves with tangible anticipation. In another example, I was invited to attend a soccer game involving a team whose fans were infamous at the time as the most racist in London. So much so, in fact, that the team's sole Black player was targeted for abuse by his own fans! Our group, a mixture of people I worked with and guys I had met barely 30 minutes before, took our seats and the game started. At a certain point, an opposition player who happened to be Black evidently did something that angered 'our' team's fans. A guy sitting in front of me, with whom I had shaken hands and conversed before the game, suddenly stood up and launched into a 60-second tirade which seemed to include every racist and offensive epithet ever uttered. As he turned to locate his folding seat, he casually said to me: "Not you mate, you're alright." I heard a couple of people behind me laugh and I turned to be greeted with the sight of a rotund, shaven-headed fan with his tattooed arm raised to high-five me. Today, more than half the football club's current first team squad and several retired fans' heroes are Black . . . or maybe not. Things changed later in life or maybe it's later life that changed me. There remain times I have to attenuate my Blackness but there are also times I accentuate it to a degree that would lead those co-workers to assume I had lost my mind. Their kids, meanwhile, undeterred by their parents' chagrin, are quite possibly growing dreadlocks and speaking in a hybrid Jamglish vernacular that would have my parents spinning in their graves. That would be great; the irony of my former co-workers kids feeling they have to get down with the Black kids to get by. Flipping between identities has become fairly effortless for me at this point but part of me always wanted just to be myself, if only I could have found out who that is.

Samuel L Jackson's character is a modern day moderator of all of the events that happened in the movie, he's really funny I'm the movie

25:27 No, Freddie Grey was in leg irons without a seatbelt. It was Eric Garner who was in a chokehold for cigarettes.

The good die mostly over bullshit

good video man! You seem like a smart person, and this is well edited as well. Keep trying out stuff, keep improving and your thing! Stay consistent. Loved it.

7:15 Dude there are small towns in the United States.

I love this film it's deep dark comical and sad

I was just searching other week for more reactions… bam ! Uploaded this not too long ago

If there's anything I think Spike might have gotten wrong it was pitting MLK Jr and Malcolm X's quotes up against each other at the end, when it seems like that was already a revision of history. But he did it to reinforce the duality of the story and it served that purpose perfectly.

I’m 46 years old and this flick is a classic. Robbin Harris,Sweet Dick Willy, was one of the funniest comedians ever. He passed away to early

Interesting that you didn't acknowledge Vito as a noble, kind-hearted character when you said the only one was the Mayor, when Vito was presented as the non-racist antithesis of his brother, and good friend of Mookie's. Could be there's a reason for that....

I appreciate your channel! And your authenticity. Much success.

That was lovely, that was lovely, I thought that was beautiful... ok yeah I know what you are.... what grown man talks like that?

Bro you different, super intelligent, your insight is right on. I'm a 53 yr old man from Brooklyn and you schooled me on some things, keep doing it. Check out Jungle Fever and Clockers also Spike Lee 🤟

Seems like no one did the right thing in the end. Disgusting movie.

Are you really crying about why people are mean to each other? This is NYC and this is life.... it's always been like that... you sound soft....

The white people did a number on this young Ms. SMH 😂