Red Hook Summer

Until it takes a challenging turn in the third act, Spike Lee's Red Hook Summer recalls his underrated 1994 film Crooklyn. After his father's death in Afghanistan, cynical adolescent Silas (Jules Brown)—aka “Flik” due to his obsessive photography and digital-videomaking on his iPad—must leave Atlanta to spend the summer in predominantly black Red Hook, Brooklyn, living with his grandfather, Enoch (Clarke Peters), a Baptist preacher of the old school. Their culture-clash is inevitable: tech-savvy Silas maintains an angry disbelief in God and an affinity (at first) for gangstas and troublemakers in the Hook housing projects, while Enoch's archaic, rock-steady faith and religiosity comes across as both irritating and courageous. Much time is spent on fiery church sermons and Gospel-play-like dialogue, during which Lee and scriptwriter James McBride argue their main characters' contrasting points-of-view while also exhibiting a sense of disillusionment over the fact that Obama's promised "hope" and "change" have not reached the lower classes. And then comes an especially shocking church service and act of ‘hood justice that stirs a moral hornet's nest while also proving that ethics in the mean streets do not break down to a simple good guy/bad guy mindset. Although the performances are uneven among a cast of largely unknowns, Lee's typical vibrant colors, street-smart dialogue, and pervasive music soundtrack (gospel interspersed with music by Bruce Hornsby) make this one of his strongest films in recent years. Highly recommended. (C. Cassady)