supatube
Okay. I was reading about serial killers around the world and David Berkowitz popped up. Then I find this movie. It really sucked. I didn't learn much more than I had already read. In fact I feel like i knew more than the filmmakers. And it was really really boring. And Spike Lee is rather impressive. Its an old movie (okay, not vintage old but old enough), perhaps it just didn't age well? Perhaps watching an old movie depicting and even older time period one can see the 90's reinventing the 70's instead of just trying to tell the story of Son of Sam. What a waste of time. Pity. I guess I should have read the synopsis: "Spike Lee's take on the Son of Sam" I don't care about his take on the matter, I wanted to know more about the matter.
Python Hyena
Summer of Sam (1999): Dir: Spike Lee / Cast: John Leguizamo, Mira Sorvino, Adrian Brody, Michael Rispoli, Jennifer Eposito: Supposedly based on an actual case in 1977 involving the shooting murders of young brunette women at night. It was the summer of fear and Sam was the name that caused women to wear blonde wigs. John Leguizamo plays a womanizer who cheats on his girlfriend yet feels guilty when he enters a murder site under police investigation. Mira Sorvino plays his girlfriend who works in her father's restaurant. Adrian Brody steals scenes as a misunderstood guy brandishing a Mohawk and wearing dog collars. He does erotic strip dances in gay bars while at home his parents have forced him to live in the garage. Screenplay is not so much about the killer as it is about the everyday lives affected by his reality. Different film for Spike Lee who examines the fear within the characters. He previously made Do the Right Thing. Leguizamo is superb as the guilt ridden cheater whose emotional decay affects everyone. Sorvino plays his girlfriend who questions him and awaits the drug ridden truth. Brody steals the film as the target due to his lifestyle and actions. Michael Rispoli leads the mob after the killer and suspects Brody. He convinces Leguizamo to help set him up. Superb filmmaking highlighting human hysteria at its most lethal. Score: 9 / 10
The_Film_Cricket
'Summer of Sam' has the perfect title and the right idea. Biographies of serial killers are so stale, more interested in facts then in personalities. In this film Spike Lee takes a different approach. Instead of showing us the nuts and bolts of the case we see the chaos that David Berkowitz caused.It is New York 1977 in a lower class, racially mixed section of New York. Disco is dying, the heat is overbearing and Vinny (John Leguizamo) observes his friends and the community going to pieces with fear.One of the locals speculates that because the neighborhood is so tight and confusing to outsiders that the killer must be someone who knows the neighborhood. That begins a lot of theories about which the killer might be. I love a particular scene in which a man speculates that the .44 caliber killer could be Reggie Jackson (his number being 44).With disco giving over the Punk scene, Ritchie, the community freak becomes the guy that everyone suspects. He has embraced the Punk invasion by wearing a mohawk and a union jack T-shirt. We don't see much of David Berkowitz (Michael Badalucco) but what to do see is horrifying. A man enraged over the least little thing and sent on a tirade.The movie is seen as flawed but I saw it as a movie that took me into a place that I had never been before and spent time with people whom I thought were real. Their rising fear and prejudice that spinning out of control reminded me of 'Do the Right Thing' as it reaches a fever pitch.No Spike Lee film is ever without technical achievements. He is always the innovator of new visual tricks. I loved his cinematography, I loved his editing and I loved his dialogue.
Richard Davis
I cannot believe my eyes. I've just read another review that commends Adrian Brody for portraying "the uprising of British punk rock" - was that sarcasm so subtle that most people have passed it by as a genuine comment? What's this film all about? Who knows - other than a hugely dysfunctional few blocks of degenerate's somewhere in the Bronx. What should the film be about? Son of Sam - or at least one would imagine it would be from the title... Adrian Brody is a joke. I couldn't quite tell, but I'm guessing that he's supposed to be a local American Italian character that becomes interested in the punk movement and begins trying to put on a god- awful British cockney/chav type accent and copying some of the punk fashion styles - pretending to be some sort of quasi punk-rocker. At least I hope so - if he's supposed to be a British punk character living in America, it was embarrassing beyond words. It was pretty bad - no matter which way you look at it. That's when he's not being super-camp in little denim shorts on a stage appearing to be some sort of stripper... how very punk rock. What's the majority of the film about? Well, as far as I can recall, too much of the film is actually a soft-porn effort for John Leguizamo's character - whether he's having his end away with his wife, a hairdressing customer or someone else from a club. What's the relevance of this sex? Who knows - it has nothing to with Son of Sam, the murders, the hunt for him or his arrest and conviction.The film really drags on. Really drags on. Wait until the black dog. That's a laff. Was I on drugs when I saw that? Phew - it's over. I started this as I was watching it... It's just finished in a totally underwhelming, but entirely predictable conclusion. Idiots - is all I can say about the characters. Idiots. I'd avoid it if I were you - watch Zodiac instead (Gyllenhall version) - it's a far better film about a serial killer and the hunt for him.
AD
