Spike Lee's disjointed pastiche of the summer of '77 in NYC
fails on just about every level. Still, because of the nature of
Lee's failures (they tend to be mildly interesting rather than
painful), there are worse bad films you could go rent.
NYC in the summer of the Son of Sam is a hot, violent, steamy,
stupid place, populated by an unfaithful, disco hairdresser (John
Leguizamo), his confused and sexually unsatisfied wife (Mira
Sorvino), loose trash from the Queens neighborhood that serves as
our setting (Jennifer Esposito), an Italian kid getting into the
punk scene (Adrian Brody), a mob boss (irascible Ben Gazarra), a
local cop who came from the streets (Anthony LaPaglia),
Leguizamo's sharp tongued paramour and boss (Bebe Neuwirth), a
bunch of Lee's standard Italian thugs, and of course, David
Berkowitz (Daniel Badalucco from TV's "The Practice")
who is going stark raving mad and taking it out on everyone else
by shooting them.
Lee's first mistake is his attempt to capture the milieu of
too many totems of '77 NYC. So we get the Queens disco, punk
haven CBGB, Plato's Retreat, Studio 54, Yankee stadium, the
looting. The effect is tiring, and Lee's attention to place
shunts any real feel for the time ("Boogie Nights"
stands in sharp contrast to "Summer of Sam" in that it
conveyed a convincing feel of late 70s, early 80s LA without
having to take you on a Map of the Stars - Burt Reynolds'
backyard pool party was quite enough).
A minor problem, as it turns out, because Lee' characters - to
a person - are uninteresting morons. Leguizamo is a conflicted
Lothario with a bad case of the madonna-whore complex - he can
nail anything in heels but his wife, with whom he must couple
both quickly and without fanfare. That we have to suffer this
semi-believable inadequacy in the late swingin' 70s (repeatedly,
as Lee cannot get enough of long, boring arguments between
Sorvino and Leguizamo) is unfortunate. That Leguizamo is the main
character, and emotes his fuckin' love for his wife, his fuckin'
confusion, and his fuckin' fear of that fuckin' Son of fuckin'
Sam, is excruciating. Worse, Leguizamo's character soon lapses
into drug abuse. The actor takes the opportunity to vomit all
over his shoes in expressing his confusion and angst.
No one else is much better. Sorvino is charmless as a wife who
tries to please her husband and then gets fed up - no, make that
fuckin' fed up. Brody, who was just another Italian goombah in
the neighborhood, now sports a dog collar and spiked hair. He is
forgettable, mainly because Lee never gives him a chance to
explain why he changed, what about punk rock has transformed him
in both spirit and style. He is bisexual, gets cash for having
sex with men, dances at a gay strip house and does porno. And if
he's angry, he'll smash a glass against his own forehead. Why? No
real reasons are given for Brody's persona. It seems that he does
these things merely because it is hot in NYC.
Naturally, the Italian toughs - looking to keep the streets
safe from Sam - decide that Brody is the killer in an obnoxious
and stock way. And that is the story.
There are cultural false notes as well. For example, Brody
digs punk and articulates that The Who are his discovery. Anyone
into punk rock in '77, however, would have found The Who much too
radio and establishment. You can tell that Lee just wanted to use
the band's anthems (he does so twice) in the movie, so presto,
The Who become a punk icon. Additionally, when Brody's band plays
at CBGB, they are much too polished and pop to be a convincing
1977 punk act. Finally, Lee casts himself as a television
reporter, which makes for painful watching during the false
looking scenes (let's just say Lee's elocution is closer to Sugar
Ray Robinson than Max Robinson - he could not have gotten job
announcing winners at a race track, much less being the "man
on the street" for a local NYC station). Again, you get the
sense that Lee just wanted to grow out his afro.
Other problems: Lee clumsily stabs race into the mix in a man-on-the-street
interview with black residents of Bed-Sty. Specifically, Lee
allows the rant of one woman, who screams that the greatest race
war ever would have ensued had the Son of Sam been black. She
then chides Lee's reporter character for acting white. The effect
is unintentionally laugh out loud, because no matter the film,
you feel Lee's childish compulsion to sacrifice story for slogan.
In the end, Summer of Sam struck me as oddly subversive. You
get the sense that Lee is most sympathetic to Berkowitz, who
spends his days screaming at a neighbor to muzzle a barking dog (this
same dog was the one who told him to kill, kill, and kill again).
But the sum of Lee's picture is creepy: given all the characters
of NYC in that muggy summer of '77, no wonder Berkowitz started
shooting people. You loathe them, and Lee makes you complicit in
empathy for Berkowitz (at least, you figure, I can get a break
from these dimwits if he gets back to the killer).
So why go rent it? Lee is a gifted director who is crippled
mainly because he has no real feel for story. Of his films, only
two stand out - "Crooklyn" and "Clockers" -
the latter because the reminisces of childhood in Brooklyn lends
itself to film by disconnected vignette, and the former because
it was built solidly on the work of Richard Price. Like "He
Got Game," Summer of Sam is a mess, but interspersed in the
carnage (and there is plenty of that, by the way, because Lee
chooses to film almost every grisly shooting) are well-realized
visions. Included are a montage of the characters' summers to The
Who's "Teenage Wasteland" a smart dance scene between
Sorvino and Leguizamo, and the recurrent pan shot of a tormented
Berkowitz who spells his maniacal rants on his walls, with
children's blocks, and in conversation with a barking dog. Lee
captures these, and many other moments, with ingenious motion (his
strong suit) and smart editing.
Unfortunately, as usual, his skill cannot overcome an inane
script, a corral of bad actors and his own excesses to the
detriment of a linear story.
