With the end of the 2024 Olympics, there’s a natural comedown. No more daily feats of athleticism to consume, and it also means that you might have a Peacock subscription with no idea what to use it for. If you subscribed for the Olympics, you may be surprised to learn that there are actually plenty of interesting movies and TV shows on the platform worth exploring.
If you want to use your subscription for just one movie this August, Do the Right Thing is the perfect choice. The movie is set on a single block in Brooklyn in the summer of 1989, and follows the complicated racial dynamics that flow through the street, culminating in a shocking and sudden act of violence. Here are three reasons you should check it out Spike Lee’s masterpiece.
It’s a biting but hilarious comedy
The most famous aspect of Do the Right Thing is its ending, but before that, the movie is a great, slice-of-life comedy that takes time to follow every aspect of the Brooklyn street that it’s set on. The core dynamic is the one between the street’s primarily Black residences and the Italian pizza shop owner whose shop happens to be on the street.
Do the Right Thing is partially an exercise in careful tone management, and Lee, who both stars in and directed the film, knows that its characters have to be real people. That means that for all of its gravitas, the movie is also almost shockingly funny.
It’s still relevant and vital after all these years
More than 30 years after its release, Lee’s movie still feels like something that you could make today. That’s partially down to the sad lack of progress we have made around racism in the decades since the movie’s release, but it’s also a credit to the way Lee was able to identify a story that felt timeless in spite of the specific clothes its characters wear, and the references they make to late ’80s New York.
It also doesn’t hurt that the movie is chock full of great performances (standouts include Danny Aiello as Sal, Bill Nunn as Radio Raheem, and John Turturro as Pino), or that Lee’s daring direction proved to be virtuosic in ways that even he may not have anticipated.
It vibrates with rage
Perhaps the most brilliant thing about Do the Right Thing is that it’s set on the hottest day of the year, and you can feel that heat almost emanating off the screen. It’s why everyone is on such a short fuse, and Lee seems to be reminding us how contingent all of the violence in the film is because of something as simple as the weather.
The movie itself is also vibrating with a sense of rage that few filmmakers are ever able to conjure. Lee’s films have always had an angry, polemical, political edge, but Do the Right Thing is the purest distillation of what he’s often trying to say.
Do the Right Thing is streaming on Peacock.
