Written by Spike Lee, Victor Colicchio, and Michael Imperioli
Directed by Spike Lee

1977 ~ How I remember that summer well. I was 11 years old, living just across the line from Queens into Nassau. Helicopters flew overhead looking for the mysterious “.44 caliber killer” who seemed to have a story going every night on the local news. This is why I relate to the angle Spike Lee took in his film, Summer of Sam. It’s not about David Berkowitz or the killings themselves. It’s about the atmosphere in the city during the time this was happening.

John Leguizamo is Vinny. He’s married to Dionna (portrayed by Mira Sorvino) but is having an affair with her friend Ruby (portrayed by Jennifer Esposito). One night they have an encounter in Vinny’s car and a short time later the place where they were parked is the site of one of the Son of Sam killings.

Paranoia sets in as Vinny and his friends react to the closeness of the killings to their Italian-American South Bronx community. Vinny is convinced the killer knows who he is and vacillates between feeling as if he was spared for some reason and thinking it’s some sort of judgment from God.

Vinny’s paranoia bubbles over and seems out of place to Dionna, but he can’t tell her why he’s so afraid of the killer without revealing where he was and who he was with.

The film has nothing to do with the killings themselves, save for creating the climate in which all of the simmering secrets and prejudices bubble over.  This was the atmosphere in New York City at the time, as much as people would like to forget about it.  One would only have to look at the climate created ten years ago by the sniper outside of Washington DC to see how it could still happen today.  This was a time of decadence in NYC with drugs (specifically cocaine) proliferating at the many discos that sprang up as everyone tried to be “cool” and casual sex being fun and easy thanks to birth control pills.  AIDS wasn’t even a word.  Beneath that outer shell, though, was an insecurity that needed just a little picking-at to be revealed.

It’s a shame that with all that, Summer of Sam just never seems to get to where it could have been.  At over two hours of running time, there should have been plenty of time to tell the story.  Spike Lee doesn’t really give his audience any surprises; I pretty much knew what was going to happen early on when Vinny’s friend Richie (portrayed by Adrien Brody) starts being singled out by the community for his “oddness” in having embraced the emerging punk culture over the disco and dance culture of the rest of them.  Lee is making the point that race doesn’t matter here; human beings will find something, anything to single out someone for; anything that doesn’t quite conform to the “in group’s” definition of “normal.”  In this case, it was what music Richie liked and how he changed his appearance.

Somewhere along the line, though, all that gets lost, and Summer of Sam gets bogged down in the insignificant lives of the “cool crowd” and Vinny’s paranoia.  There are scenes that seem to be building to something important that doesn’t pay off and conversations that go nowhere as well.  I think Lee was going for a slice of life in a sense, but it just drags on and on and ends up drowning what would have been a good film.

The acting is good, particularly Leguizamo.  I didn’t like him and I didn’t feel like I was supposed to.  He’s one of those guys who is trying to hang onto that feeling of popularity he’s had, but his star is fading and his actions throughout the movie are helping it along.  From his affair with his wife’s friend to the way he treats Richie, everything he has that is good is falling apart and he’s throwing it away with both hands.  Sorvino has a non-role really here, which is a shame. She’s way underused as Vinny’s wife.  Brody gives a terrific performance as Richie, and he was the character I could identify with the most.  If you ever thought bullying was a recent phenomenon, one look here at the character of Richie will show how it’s been present throughout the ages.

Tighter editing is the one thing I would have wished for in Summer of Sam.  I do think it was a good film and accurate to what I remember of those days.  However, there was too much peripheral to the actual story being told that takes away from the meaty part of the film.  I have no complaints with the acting, and the story itself is pretty damn good.  There’s just too much extraneous material to the main story that makes watching this a bit of a chore.  Still, I’d recommend viewing it at least once.