Do the Right Thing

1989 / 120min / DCP

Has any movie better captured the atmosphere of those dog days when you can actually feel the suffocating weight of summertime in NYC? Production designer Wynn Thomas’s blazing red touch-ups on the shops and homes of Lexington Avenue and DP Ernest Dickerson’s hard-edged photography combine to vividly convey the feeling of a blistering, oppressive heat wave that melts blacktop and sets tempers simmering in Lee’s urgent, angry city symphony, which bears witness to the pressure cooker effects of a NYC heatwave on a few blocks in Bed-Stuy, bringing simmering racial resentment to boiling point.