Summer of Sam Review
by Jon Popick (mailbot AT sick-boy DOT com)June 27th, 1999
PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com
You would think that a movie about David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam killer, would be fascinating. Well, it might be. I don’t know, because Summer of Sam isn’t that movie. Replacing what could have been an interesting story is a hodgepodge of dull characters played by even duller actors with occasionally interesting photography and an irritating score. They say there are eight million stories in the naked city, and they sure picked the dumbest one to tell.
The film opens and closes with a Jimmy Breslin narrative. He’s the guy that Berkowitz wrote letters to during his killing spree in the dog days of 1977. That summer also featured scorching temperatures, a blackout (and looting attendant thereto), the Yankees’ run for the pennant, the emergence of Studio 54 and the birth of the punk scene. Director Spike Lee (He Got Game), who co-wrote the script with first-timers Victor Colicchio and Michael Imperioli (Christopher from The Sopranos), crams so many plotlines and characters into the film that you could literally nod off, wake up, and think that a completely different film was playing (I didn’t fall asleep, but really wish that I had).
Loosely held together by the killings are the stories of:
* Sex-crazed Vinny (John Leguizamo, Spawn) and straight-laced Dionna (Mira Sorvino, At First Sight), a young couple plagued by hairdresser Vinny’s infidelity and penchant for looking and acting like a Tony Manero (Saturday Night Fever) wannabe. When he isn’t trolling for tail, Vinny hangs out with…
* Joe T. (Michael Rispoli) and his Goomba gang of posturing failures that think that the .44 killer could be…
* Ritchie (Adrien Brody, The Thin Red Line), a burgeoning fan of the British punk scene (complete with bad English accent) who is forced to live in the garage after walking in on his mom and step-father in the midst of a raucous shag-fest. Ritchie secretly works in a gay club, shoots porn and eventually starts the band Late Term Abortion with his girlfriend…
* Ruby (Jennifer Esposito, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer), a vivacious neighborhood girl who shuns her Italian roots to be with the outcast Ritchie. She ignores the fact that her boyfriend is on the short list of potential killers composed by…
* Luigi (Ben Gazzara, Happiness), the king of the community, who organizes a blackout party and arms the citizens with baseball bats to keep the looters out of his neighborhood. Luigi was apparently somewhat of a father figure to…
* Detective Lou Petrocelli (Anthony LaPaglia, Lansky) who, together with Detective Curt Atwater (Roger Guenveur Smith), haplessly stagger in and out of the film in an attempt to catch the killer… * David Berkowitz (Michael Badalucco, The Practice), a crazy guy who looks like he lives in a Nine Inch Nails video and is driven off the deep end by…
* His neighbor’s dog (voiced by John Turturro) who will give hophead viewers something to piss their shorts over.
The film has occasional moments of visual brilliance, and viewers can almost smell the stench of the rancid New York streets, thanks to cinematographer Ellen Kuras’ (The Mod Squad) rich photography. Sam’s ending transforms the capture of Berkowitz into the fervor of a huge rock concert. But that’s been done before (and better, in Natural Born Killers). And why is Berkowitz only shown sporadically through the film? Why don’t we see what makes him tick? For some reason, Lee doesn’t even show his face when he offs his victims. Speaking of victims, viewers will wish that each one of these horrible people in the film would be a casualty. And some will even wish that they were murder victims as well. And don’t get me started on the extended orgy scene or the two music videos that are roughly inserted into the film. Lee is a talented filmmaker, but only when he has a good script (read: not one of his own).
There are precious few funny scenes (other than the talking dog), like when Joe T. and gang go to a Late Term Abortion show at seminal punk club CBGB, dressed like goodfellas, to question Ritchie about the murders. They walk out of the club saying that they could take ten showers and still not rid themselves of the bar’s fetor. You could say the same thing about Summer of Sam as you walk out of the theater. (2:22 - R for strong graphic violence and sexuality, pervasive strong language and drug use)
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
