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List Price: $14.99 | | Label: Walt Disney Video
Salesrank: 23930
Released: December 21, 1999 |
| Our Price: $4.98 |
| Used Price: $3.75 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
All of the events of the infamous new york city summer of 77 are seen mostly through the eyes of vinny a philandering bronx hairdresser. Until that summer vinny sees himself as king of the old neighborhood hes a disco king drives a nice car has the respect of his old buddies and a beautiful wife. Studio: Buena Vista Home Video Release Date: 10/07/1999 Starring: John Leguizamo Adrien Brody Run time: 142 minutes Rating: R Director: Spike Lee
Description of Summer of Sam:
It's important to note that Spike Lee's drama is not titled Son of Sam. Summer of Sam doesn't chronicle the killer as much as the times: the blistering hot summer of 1977 when the Big Apple's psyche was taken hostage by the lone gunman. We spot the killer (Michael Badalucco) in his mad ramblings, but the film centers on two friends from the Bronx: Vinny and Ritchie (John Leguizamo, Adrien Brody). Vinny and his wife, Dionna (Mira Sorvino), bury a bad marriage (he cheats at a drop of a hat) in the disco halls of the area. Ritchie returns to the neighborhood sporting punk hair, punk clothes, and a British accent that immediately infuriates the neighborhood boys oozing far too much testosterone. Cops, local mob leaders, and the guys on the street all have ideas who the killer is; neighborhood loners to Reggie Jackson (in the midst of World Series heroism) are on their misguided lists of suspects. When the film looks at how the citizens faced the fearful times, Lee scores with his energetic camerawork and pop soundtrack. Yet the film is banal in its domestic dramatics. The film takes large detours into Vinny's home sex life (stagnant) and Ritchie's extracurricular activities. One of the marriage arguments--though real and well acted--is so long and cliché-ridden you wonder if someone fell asleep in the editing booth. Add the point-blank killings and nonstop vulgarity and you have Lee's most unpleasant film. --Doug Thomas
Summer of Sam Reviews:
One of the WORST,most worthless films ever made 
2009-01-04 - A hateful, unwatchable abortion of a movie--Who green-lighted this piece of trash and WHY? Awful story, script, direction, characters--I think this was the only time I was actually made ILL by how awful a film was--I would have walked out, but I was in the company of other "victims" at the theatre and didn't feel like HITCHIKING, or I would have! Spike Lee owes the patrons of this miserable waste of filmstock a refund (and punitive damages) A disgrace to Hollywood and even the decade of the 70's--one thing worse than sitting through this film would have been getting shot by David Berkowitz--S-U-C-K-S! Spikey went on to make other horrible films like BAMBOOZLED. Someone take his movie camera away!!
Weird 
2008-12-16 - The movie is not what I expected it to be. Nope, not at all.
A Spike Lee Junk
2008-08-24 - Spike Lee retreads the same old thing - a film with stereotypical Black and Italian-American "types" in "Summer of Sam" as he often does in most of his work (if you can call it that) and that's all you get from this film.
The film sports an all star cast, but aside from Adrian Brody's role, the film falls flat. Lee just is not using his cast as anything more than window dressing for a bad script.
Indeed one feels the paranoia of that summer, however it's way overdone. It would be great from a high school musical but this is supposed to be a feature film. Subtlety is not Mr. Lee's strong suit and it's worn quite thin in this wanna be nostalgia trip. Remove the cursing and you have no sound except for a good sound track - great music. The camera shots are everywhere and no where.
Note too, when the "bad men" enter CBBGs, the band on stage was a 1990s band who were not around in 1977. Who makes a mistake like this? A person whose ego is bigger than his research department.
This movie was painful to watch and the DVD is hardly worth renting much less purchasing.
S.O.S. 
2008-04-28 - This film, for the most part is great, everything except for the scene that involves an orgy. For the most part though, the cast and crew did great work, and it should of been a hit. Great DVD to own.
One of the trashiest movies I've ever seen 
2008-04-27 - Spike Lee gets the feel and the look of the late 70s down pat, but this movie ultimately fails as either a thriller or a slice-of-life vignette. To be fair to Spike Lee, he does have a good eye for New York details, and the people in this film are recognizable as local types, but I've yet to come across the White neighborhood here that was entirely made up of druggies, whores, perverts, adulterers, gangsters, rent-boys and generic sub-moronic dirtbags, as Spike Lee depicts the Italians of Throgs Neck. Even in the "bad" old days of Amos and Andy, no White writer would dare portray Blacks in such a racist manner. Can you imagine if a White director portrayed the people of Harlem in this way?
Besides the offensive racist denigration, this movie is sickeningly vulgar, in its language and its depiction of the animalistic sex life of its characters. All of the people we meet in this movie are bestialized caricatures, savage to the core. There's no humanistic sympathy here, just vengeful racial defamation by a bitter Black racist, who convinced a bunch of White Stepin Fetchits to throw crap on their own people.
