Spike Lee’s Red Hook Summer (2012/Variance/Image Blu-ray)
Picture:
B Sound: B- Extras: B- Film: B-
In recent
times, Spike Lee has split his time between more commercial films (Inside Man, the upcoming Oldboy remake) than we are used to
seeing him helm and some more documentaries that continue to hit the nail on
the head as always. He recently wanted
to return with a film that was more of a personal, political work than he had
made in recent years, but even with Obama currently being the President Of The
United States, the blockbuster-driven studio system turned him down across the
board. Therefore, like Kevin Smith on
his political horror film Red State,
Lee had to fund Red Hook Summer
(2012) almost all by himself.
Shot in
three weeks, it is not only his latest revisiting of Brooklyn,
but a second attempt to do a fish-out-of-water child tale like Crooklyn. In that film, an African American from a poor
neighborhood visits a suburb with disorienting results, while here a young
African American suburban male nicknamed Flik (Jules Brown) from Atlanta moving
to this harder-hit section of Brooklyn.
He cannot stop carrying around his iPad and wants to record and watch
things through it too often to a fault.
His
mother is leaving him with a grandfather (singer and character actor Clarke
Peters of The Wire, Treme, Outland, K-PAX and Mona Lisa) who is heavily steeped in
Christianity (usually a trap and even curse for African American characters in
Lee’s films, esp. Malcolm X,
reviewed on Blu-ray elsewhere on this site) and Flik is a vegetarian atheist
who does is increasingly unhappy with being there. He also meets more religious friends of his
granddad, some of the tough streetwise guys in the projects (including a strong
turn by Nate Parker of Arbitrage and
Red Tails) and has adjustment
disorder all summer long.
Of his
many urban films, this is a return to from for Lee whose other Brooklyn films like Crooklyn,
25th Hour and Summer Of Sam did not offer the edge or
impact of Jungle Fever, Clockers or Do The Right Thing, for which is film is intended as a flipside
revisiting of. Also, his personal
problem of trying to tell the Black Experience through the contradictory
approach of the New York School of Filmmaking is finally starting to change as he finds his own form and feel. He even appears a few times here as his
sometimes humorous persona Mookie still delivering pizza from Sal’s (guess the
place was finally rebuilt?) so it is a pleasant surprise that works more often
than not, is an honest film and worthy of the world he constructed decades
before.
Like Do The Right Thing, which was actually
ignored and even censored by certain ultras-right wing movie chains nationwide,
Red Hook Summer was hardly
distributed at all and even much less so, yet it also is a back-to-roots film
that will remind more than a few people of She’s
Gotta Have It in its basic directness; the kind of directness that
established Lee as a worldwide auteur in the first place and still informs his
work today. He’s still got it and that
makes Red Hook Summer one of the
year’s best films.
The 1080p
1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer is impressive throughout, shot
in the colorful style of Do The Right
Thing, Mo’ Better Blues, Jungle Fever and Clockers, but the surprise is that it was all shot on a digital
high definition series of cameras from Sony that display more consistent
fidelity and color range than most HD productions of late. The light has not been darkened to hide the HD,
color range has not been rendered phony by hacks who don’t know what to do with
color and both detail and depth are pretty good. In addition, select shots are on Super 8mm
film with the same color-rich qualities so Lee and Director of Photography Kerwin
DeVonish (whom he just worked with on the Michael Jackson documentary Bad 25) have instantly found a way to
create a consistent cinematic language.
With Blu-ray, you can see what a rich film was made and there are even
some demo moments along the way for the best home theater systems.
The DTS-HD
MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix can be towards the front speakers as this is
an often dialogue-based film and some location audio can be a little limited,
but surrounds are good when they kick in and the score by hit
singer/songwriter/musician Bruce Hornsby is more effective and interesting than
expected as well.
Extras
include a Teaser, Music Video, 25+ minutes look behind the scenes of the making
of the film and yet another solid feature length audio commentary track by Lee
that is as interesting and thorough as his commentaries usually are.
- Nicholas Sheffo
