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Summer of Sam
Buena Vista Pictures


5.6

based on 26 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 3 votes
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FILM:

Internet Movie Database

MPAA RATING: R for strong graphic violence and sexuality, pervasive strong language and drug use

Starring John Leguizamo, Mira Sorvino, Jennifer Esposito, Adrien Brody, Michael Rispoli, Bebe Neuwirth, Saverio Guerra, and Patti LuPone

An Italian-American neighborhood in the Bronx is terrorized during David Berkowitz's (aka Son of Sam) 1977 murder spree.

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	Victor Colicchio Michael Imperioli Spike Lee
DIRECTED BY:	Spike Lee
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: October 8, 2002 Video: August 28, 2001 Theatrical: July 2, 1999
RUNNING TIME:	142 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

This is a terrific movie: jolting, savage, horrifically funny, nightmarishly exciting but also brainy and compassionate.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Lee's control and storytelling flair have never seemed more assured and there are moments so powerful and thrilling we feel we're in the hands of a master filmmaker at the peak of his powers.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Lee at his best, a virtuoso piece of filmmaking that's stylish, substantial, and rich in detail.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Lee has a wealth of material here, and the film tumbles through it with exuberance.

Salon.com Sarah Vowell

An urban epic, a noisy, swirling, flawed, hilarious, witty, tender, violent, questionable train wreck.

Film Threat Ron Wells

Lee gives us cross-section of characters, almost none of whom escape the summer unchanged.

San Francisco Examiner Wesley Morris

One of Lee's unsung gifts as a filmmaker is his discovery of that place between eye-popping surrealism and wrenching Greek tragedy.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

The most refreshing thing about Summer of Sam is that it doesn't try to impose a moral or define the limits of its story.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

It is a dark, violent, sexually explicit motion picture that will surely offend timid viewers.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

A film in which many things seem to happen twice and others not at all.

The New York Times Elvis Mitchell

This film, like the dazzling but many-tentacled "He Got Game" before it, makes up in fury much of what it lacks in form.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Like most of Lee’s work, this movie bites off a lot more than it can possibly chew, and it bristles with the worst kind of New York provincialism.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

A tabloid slice of tabloid life, ragged, vivid, awkward and punchy all at once.

Newsweek David Ansen

A thick stew of sex, violence and suspicion, Lee's movie -- spiked up with a virtually nonstop soundtrack -- definitely has the power to jangle your nerves.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Summer of Sam is never less than absorbing but feels just a bit like yesterday's news, both narratively and cinematically.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Brilliant, goofy, vindictive, incoherent and compassionate, Summer of Sam begins as a work of startling ambition, spins out of control, and finally limps to a bland halt.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

An intelligent, viscerally kinetic throw-down, a jolt of pure adrenalized Spike that holds more than a few touches of genius in its overripe storyline.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

It's a kaleidoscope of ideas that range from exciting to silly and gaudy.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

Hobbled by a multiplicity of narrative lines and superfluous, often stereotypical characters, the movie suffers from a lack of both focus and passion.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

It's all been done before, and better.

Slate David Edelstein

Spike Lee is a virtuoso filmmaker, a wizard at selling a sequence, but he'll never make an entirely coherent movie until he learns to go deeper into his subjects instead of wider with them.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

A glum and unpleasant experience, caught between what it wants to do and how it has chosen to do it.

The New Yorker David Denby

Slamming different kinds of experience together, Lee tries to do with montage what he cannot do with dramatic logic.

Dallas Observer Bill Gallo

The cast has plenty of room to emote, but their task feels a bit empty and thankless. For the most part, they're carrying the director's water.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

If there's any moral to this sorry story, perhaps Lee's stealth-message is it: Even when it's not about race, it is.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Spike Lee noisily attempts to place the hunt for real-life serial killer David Berkowitz at the center of a hotheaded sociological fantasy linking disco glitz, punk rebellion, ethnic insularity, sexual craving, and sizzling heat into one rattling chain of urban hysteria.

The average user rating for this movie is 5.6 (out of 10) based on 3 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

The Strange Case Of Gilbert Mulroneycakes gave it an 8:
Found myself flitting in and out of this film a little - partly because being British (we've never heard of the Son of Sam over here, not even in passing) I'm lacking in context, but also because of a slight lack of focus on Spike's part. I get that it's not telling a story so much as following people around with a camera, but it doesn't really hold the viewer's attention for long. Well, not mine anyway; your mileage may vary. Having said that, it's good: great acting from Brody, Leguizamo, Sorvino et al, and Michael Badalucco (sic) gives a genuinely terrifying performance as the .44 Calibre Killer himself. Not sure about Jim Breslin introducing and concluding the film ("Eight million stories in the Naked City" indeed), but that's probably down to the context thing again. But would it have killed them to put in a title sequence at the start? Honestly. That apart, worth checking out.

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Summer of Sam Buena Vista Pictures

Summer of Sam
Buena Vista Pictures