One of the most striking things about Do the Right Thing (1989) is the way it shows a world that simultaneously no longer exists and yet is still alarmingly relevant and prescient about the world we currently live in. Spike Lee sets the film in Bed-Stuy, a neighbourhood in Brooklyn that was majority Black from the 1930s until the gentrification of Brooklyn in the 2000s. Lee’s film showcases a thriving Black community of the late 80s, created by the film crew by transforming the dilapidated Stuyvesant Avenue—creating the Korean grocery and Italian pizzeria seen in the film, creating a radio station in a burnt-out building, and turning abandoned rowhouses and crack dens into the film’s vibrant residential brownstones. The film’s production design utilized earth tones of red, orange, and brown in painting the neighbourhood to reinforce the heat wave in the story—a heat wave visually emphasized by the cinematography’s warm colour timing. The street where the film was shot was later renamed Do the Right Thing Way in 2015.

This vibrant Black community depicted in the film takes us to a time in New York City when Ed Koch was at the end of a long three-term reign as the city’s mayor, and racial tensions were on the rise with the murders of Eleanor Bumpurs, Michael Griffith, and Yusuf Hawkins. Koch was criticized for his handling of racial issues, and in 1989 he was narrowly defeated by David Dinkins, who became the city’s first Black mayor.

The version of Bed-Stuy we see in the movie may no longer exist, pushed by the forces of gentrification into a more multi-ethnic reality, the fact remains that the racial tensions the film highlights have only continued to simmer and grow over time, thanks to a variety of factors. While we may hope that the arc of time bends towards justice, and that issues of bigotry and intolerance would improve and de-escalate over time, one aspect of the movie’s story that has escalated quite dramatically in the past 36 years has been the issue of police violence.

Do the Right Thing was shot in the summer of 1988, three years before the beating of Rodney King by the LAPD which set off mass protests against racially biased police brutality. When Lee’s picture was screened in the summer of 1989, film critics, op-ed columnists, and even some city officials opined that its frank examination of racial enmity in urban America might induce Black audiences to riot. Lee always felt that this was a profoundly insulting concern, implying that Black audiences would not have the same level of self-control or ability to rationally view a fictional drama that a white audience would have. When the LA riots arrived, they arrived in response to real police violence, not dramatized depictions. And yet, the police violence of the time came in the form of beatings with clubs from uniformed officers—a far cry from the violent multiple shootings from militarized police armed with semi-automatic weapons and sporting tactical armour and helmets. In Do the Right Thing, we see a depiction of police violence that feels almost quaint in the reality of 2025, where we have seen video online of police officers bringing far greater violence onto Black communities.

In this regard, Do the Right Thing is sadly still relevant, prescient, and quite depressing in showing us a social ill that has only gotten more severe with time. The nationwide protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd showed that the anger that had motivated the LA riots had not gone anywhere, and that the United States still has a long, long way to go in reforming its approach to both policing and to systemic racism, problems that will not be dealt with so long as those in charge hold the attitude that these problems do not in fact exist and the very acknowledgement of them should be penalized.

Despite these sobering social issues being at the heart of Spike Lee’s film, Do the Right Thing is in large part a very enjoyable movie to watch. For a great part of its run time it’s fun, funny, and immensely quotable, filled with memorable characters audiences love spending time with. The secret to this is in its focus on its neighbourhood setting. While the racial divides in America eventually come to a boil in the sweltering New York heat, we get to spend a lot of time with the film’s iconic cast before things explode.

In addition to writing, directing, and producing the picture, Spike Lee cast himself as the lead role of Mookie, filling out the cast with a murderer’s row of character actors. Danny Aiello, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn, John Turturro, Rosie Perez, Martin Lawrence, Frankie Faison, and Samuel L. Jackson are among those who make Do the Right Thing the special joy to watch that it is. Rosie Perez had never acted in a film before, and was cast by Spike Lee after he met her at a dance club. Her role rocketed her not only to stardom but also to sex-symbol status that she never became fully comfortable with.

At the time of its release, Do the Right Thing featured an up-to-the-moment soundtrack that now serves as a nostalgic blast to the past that roots the film in its time and place of Brooklyn, 1989, most notably with the Public Enemy track “Fight the Power” that backs most of the key moments in the movie. The track was written for the film at Lee’s request, and perfectly embodies the racial tension and anger at the heart of the movie’s most proactive characters.

At the end of the film, Lee presents two quotes—one from Malcolm X and one from Martin Luther King, Jr. White critics often see these quotes as expressing opposing viewpoints on the role of violence in social change, but white critics also often spend a lot of time on the question of “Did Mookie do the right thing?” Speaking as someone with a degree in Film Studies, I can certainly tell you I had more than one teacher who asked us to write a paper on the topic. And yet Lee noted that this is really only a question white audiences tend to have—is property damage an acceptable response to murder? Black audiences never seem to ask this same hand-wringing question. For white audiences, Lee seemed to be asking a question with his two final quotes—violence or non-violence, which path should you follow? For Black audiences, there was never a contradiction, never a question, simply a clear directive: do the right thing.

Still Doing the Right Thing: Spike Lee’s 1989 Classic in 2025

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