Summer of Sam
Spike Lee feels like the right filmmaker to make a movie about the summer of 1977, when Son of Sam held the city of New York hostage with his reign of terror. There’s enough here from him as a filmmaker to where he can pull that story off, given the right material. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the right material; the screenplay he shares credit on with Victor Colicchio and Michael Imperioli is unfocused and filled with issues that make “Summer of Sam” a disappointing film from the provocative director.
The film begins with journalist Jimmy Breslin setting the stage of what it was like in the summer of ’77 in New York City, and he would close the film, as well; he received several letters from Son of Sam over the summer, taunting the police. We then begin with two people, shot in a car at night; I couldn’t help but think that Lee’s approach to the killings might have been of some inspiration to David Fincher when he made “Zodiac” later. As the killings commence, and the police are unsure who the perpetrator is, the neighborhood where Son of Sam is doing his killing is under siege, and everyone is on edge. But the swinging ’70s are in full view, and we see glimpses of the societal changes going on in people like Vinny (John Leguizamo) and his wife, Dionna (Mira Sorvino), who are married but having issues; Ritchie (Adrien Brody), who is engaged in the punk scene; and many others, as business as usual becomes anything but when Sam strikes fear in the population.
“Summer of Sam” has a deep-seeded paranoia and anxiety that is palpable when Lee brings us back to the Son of Sam, and even shows us David Berkowitz (Michael Badalucco, in a terrific performance, the film’s best), with Terrence Blanchard’s score, and the images seen through Ellen Kuras’s cinematography, leaving us unsettled as we witness Berkowitz’s madness. When Lee dives into crime drama, as he is here, he is as riveting as any filmmaker working now, even his mentor, Martin Scorsese. He doesn’t skimp on the violence, but neither is the film exploitative in how it shows it; Lee has a very specific purpose in this film, and it’s to put us in the mindset of not so much Berkowitz, but the people whose community was rocked by his killing spree. The images we see of Berkowitz help with that purpose, and when Lee succeeds in his task, it’s some great cinema.
What makes “Summer of Sam” lesser Lee, however, is when it focuses on the characters, and the neighborhood they live in, where Sam is doing his killing. It’s a largely Italian neighborhood, but the way the characters are written, the characters don’t really carry much weight. The film deals in very stereotypical characterizations of all races, but the Italian ones feel particularly garish for a Spike Lee joint; yes, he did similarly in “Do the Right Thing” and “Jungle Fever,” but there were specific points on racism and discrimination that he was trying to make there. In “Summer of Sam,” it’s a shorthand, and it’s off-putting; it was also one of the things that turned me off to the film in 1999, and made it difficult to get into the characters, at the time. This time, I found a bigger appreciation for some of those arcs, which deal with issues regarding the sexual revolution and the emergence of the punk scene. Admittedly, I don’t know that either one belongs in this movie, although Ritchie getting into punk rock is used effectively with the paranoia over Son of Sam, and that shifting of tones and storylines makes this movie a disappointing work from one of the most exciting filmmakers of his generation.
