Summer of Sam

Name: Summer of Sam
Genre: Drama, Thriller, Romance, Crime
Released: July 2, 1999
Duration: 142 min
Rating: 67
Cast: Adrien Brody, John Leguizamo, Mira Sorvino

1999

METASCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 26 Critics

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USER SCORE

Overwhelming dislike based on 115 Ratings

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1.3	User Score Overwhelming dislike based on 115 Ratings

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Movie Details & Credits

Buena Vista Pictures | Release Date: July 2, 1999

Starring: Adrien Brody, John Leguizamo, Mira Sorvino

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

Director: Spike Lee

Genre(s): Drama, Thriller, Romance, Crime

Rating: NC-17

Runtime: 142 min

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Awards & Rankings

68	#68 Best Movie of 1999
88	#88 Most Discussed Movie of 1999

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Critic Reviews

100

Chicago Tribune - Michael Wilmington

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

Chicago Sun-Times - Roger Ebert

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

ReelViews - James Berardinelli

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

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. Read full review

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. Read full review

The New Yorker - David Denby

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

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. Read full review

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User Reviews

SeanK

Jun 5, 2009

The film opens with a scene set in a dance club where we see one of our main characters being introduced by the sounds off the floor. Spike Lee who has grown to become a very wel known yet controversial director has always had a certain style to his movies that almost implement that The film opens with a scene set in a dance club where we see one of our main characters being introduced by the sounds off the floor. Spike Lee who has grown to become a very wel known yet controversial director has always had a certain style to his movies that almost implement that somewherehes left his mark but in Summer of Sam we see him drop all the ethnic tensions that he seems t focus so much on lately and he gives us his best film to date. John Leguizamo gives a great and somewhat sad performance as a sex crazed disco dancin italian in the Bronx where he tries to remain faithful to his caring wife but in the end he basically messes up. Lee prsents the true nature of a city in terror as the Son of Sam sweeps through the city knocking off innocent young brunettes and any others who are so unfortunte to taste a .44 calibur. He gives us two stories which Lee works well with. The film is a very raging emotional and angry film tht shows the darker side of our world and what it use to be. Ifi had any complaints it would be the last minute love inerest that Adrien Brody seems to attach but not carry.… Expand

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M.C

Aug 7, 2008

One of my favorite films, a cult classic.

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DirigiblePulp

Feb 1, 2015

Summer of Sam has a couple different meanings. It's not quite Son of Sam, the nickname of the serial killer the movie is ostensibly about. It's also an abbreviation for SOS, as in mayday. These are on purpose. Spike Lee centers a movie about paranoia, changing times, metaphorical dogSummer of Sam has a couple different meanings. It's not quite Son of Sam, the nickname of the serial killer the movie is ostensibly about. It's also an abbreviation for SOS, as in mayday. These are on purpose. Spike Lee centers a movie about paranoia, changing times, metaphorical dog collars, war, post trauma, stress, sexual revolutions, disco vs punk and scapegoats into one electric, charged, throbbing explosion of a movie. It's a bit indulgent, maybe doesn't completely add up, and isn't quite perfect in its period detail (enough about this particular punk scene being a year or two off, this is art!).

The film revolves around these murders because they represent another movement in American history. One in which the hangover from Vietnam is finally fading, and what's left is the feeling that we have been used and abused. Like dogs, wearing the collar. Adrien Brody's punk rocker represents this rebellion against the collar, against the causeless wars and manipulation. Punk, gay and uninterested in conformity. John Leguizamo (with a performance that questions how he never quite became the star he should have been), still wears the collar, refuses to treat his wife properly and sleeps around. He treats her as an object to be on a pedestal, not one to be shamed and used like all those other "free love" types.

This PTSD serial killer is hearing orders from a dog wearing its collar (literally, in one of a couple surreal sequences that clearly establish this film as metaphor and fever dream), just like Nam' and he can't stop killing. So blame the punks, the gays, the unorthodox priests, anyone but the master. You gotta fight the powers that be.… Expand

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Enderman

Jan 17, 2017

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

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

JoshC

Sep 22, 2007

Here's a helpful rule of thumb for divining the general worth of a Spike Lee movie: If it's generating bales of media controversy, it's not going to be his best work. If it comes and goes without a major radar blip, it'll be up to his extraordinarily outsize talents: Here's a helpful rule of thumb for divining the general worth of a Spike Lee movie: If it's generating bales of media controversy, it's not going to be his best work. If it comes and goes without a major radar blip, it'll be up to his extraordinarily outsize talents: moving, thought-provoking, a humane and technical marvel. Which is to say that you probably didn't catch 1995's ''Clockers'' or 1998's ''He Got Game,'' because commentators and columnists weren't calling for Lee's head on a platter. And that's because those films didn't go out of their way to push racial/cultural hot buttons (trenchantly? irresponsibly? depends on who you ask), nor was the filmmaker indulging in his annoyingly puckish penchant for in-your-face sound bites. No, here Lee was just making good, solid, troubling stories about people rather than archetypes. With the towering exception of 1989's ''Do the Right Thing'' -- one of the great movies of its decade precisely BECAUSE it pisses so many people off (and, for the record, let's note that it didn't start riots in the street as writer Joe Klein predicted it would) -- Spike's art tends to prosper in inverse proportion to his agitprop: ''Jungle Fever,'' ''Mo' Better Blues,'' even chunks of ''Malcolm X,'' ''Crooklyn,'' and ''Girl 6'' are all hobbled by the director's itch to make provocative statements and use his characters as social chess pieces. (Nowhere does this show up more than in Lee's often-cardboard, more-often-cruel female characters). So now we've got ''Summer of Sam,'' a movie that has ticked off everyone from the families of the victims of the infamous ''Son of Sam'' to serial killer David Berkowitz himself. Spike is, as usual, defending himself in the press and throwing small, piquant thought bombs in the process. And guess what? The movie itself is a hugely ambitious attempt to corral all the sexual/political/racial/cultural/meteorlogical crosscurrents of 1977 New York City that falls squarely, if fascinatingly, on its butt. Actually, ''Summer of Sam'' is something of a bait and switch. It's not really about Berkowitz's reign of terror so much as it's an Italian-American street scene: ''Mean Streets'' meets ''Do the Right Thing.'' The main characters are an adulterous Bronx hairdresser (John Leguizamo), his dazed, goodhearted wife (Mira Sorvino), and a neighborhood kid gone punk (Adrien Brody). Hanging in the background are a bunch of low-rent goodfellas who think anyone with a Mohawk has to be a serial killer and -- wayyyy off in the distance -- the tubby figure of Berkowitz, whose inner and outer torments are played as gonzo, campy horror. What ''Summer of Sam'' does very well is put across an atmosphere of queasy dread, stirring the heat, the blackout, the lootings, CBGBs, and the infamous sex-club Plato's Retreat into concentric circles of hell. If nothing else, the movie's a reminder of how truly Disneyfied New York City has become. But Leguizamo's losing battle with his Madonna/whore complex is laid out obviously from the start and only gets more so, and, Brody aside, the street buddies are snottily observed caricatures (compare Michael Rispoli's one-note work here with his richly shaded turn as a dying Mafiosi on HBO's ''The Sopranos.'') The fault's not Lee's alone; he's working from a script by Michael Imperioli (another ''Sopranos'' vet) and Victor Colicchio that puts stick figures in front of an epic canvas. But it's the director who's putting this out there as a Spike Lee joint -- with all the baggage that that phrase has come to signify. Hasn't he learned that movies work best when it's the characters carrying the baggage?… Expand

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