Next up on the AFI podcast is this Spike Lee movie from 1989. So a thing is, I had no idea what this was about, really. And as it opens, it seems like it’s mostly doing a “day in the life of a neighborhood” kind of thing, this loving portrait of a particular time and place.

(In retrospect, I realize I was thinking it was a period piece because of how extremely it is leaning into its late ’80s setting — the cars, the music, the clothes, the technology — but of course, if you make a movie in the late ‘80s and set it in a fully realized present-day, that’s what you’re gonna get. But I will say that Lee does an amazing job of capturing time and place with an intentionality that you don’t usually get outside of period pieces.)

But and so, that’s not really what it is. Spoilers follow.

Because ultimately all the racial tensions that have been simmering under the surface in this neighborhood — between an Italian-American pizza maker who’s been a neighborhood fixture for 25 years and his primarily Black customers; between that guy and his much more racist son; between Korean corner store owners and their Black customers — flare up in a scuffle between the pizza guy and an irate customer who wants to see Black faces up on his “Wall of Fame” (full of Italian-Americans).

And then the police come in. And while breaking up the scuffle, they literally choke a Black guy to death, a straight-up murder in the streets that could have been ripped from last summer’s headlines.

The police murder inspires a small riot, and the pizza guy’s place is burned down, and the Korean family’s store nearly gets attacked too (which reminds you that oh yeah, anti-Asian violence is also ripped from the headlines), and it’s clear that Lee is setting up kind of a “is violence justified in circumstances like these?” debate, made explicit in ending on a set of for-and-against paired quotes from MLK and Malcolm X about the political utility of violence in the service of justice. But while this was apparently super-controversial in its day, to a modern eye, the film seems to be overplaying the property damage and underplaying the police murder.

If that’s maybe a small way that the movie’s age makes itself felt, the larger way is in its treatment of women, particularly Rosie Perez’s character, who is mostly seen either a) berating the film’s protagonist angrily, or b) getting naked. The latter of which is particularly problematic because apparently Perez was extremely not-cool with that at the time. So yeah, that sucks.

But it’s one of the few failings of a film that otherwise is brilliantly subtle, full of great characters and great performances, and drawing a vivid portrait of a neighborhood while also dealing with regrettably timeless themes. Highly recommended.

(Also, Giancarlo Esposito is in this, and I kept looking at all the old guys, trying to figure out which one he was… but oh, he was one of the young guys, because 1989 was a long time ago. Right.)