Summer of Sam (1999)

Entertainment Weekly
"...[See it for the] bravura sequence set to the tremble and throb of The Who's 1971 anthem BABA O'RILEY....Glee alternates with gloom..." -- Rating: B 01/07/2000 p.75

New York Times
"...Furiously enthralling....SUMMER OF SAM is loaded with visual energy..." 07/02/1999 p.E1

Premiere
"...Energetic, inventive....Lee's hand with actors has never been surer....A truly remarkable achievement..." 08/01/1999 p.28-30

Box Office
"...Lee's feeling for the material, as expressed through his usual visual pyrotechnics, is undeniably effective..." 09/01/1999 p.155

Chicago Sun-Times
"...Lee's best films thrum with a wound-up energy, and SUMMER OF SAM vibrates with fear, guilt and lust..." 07/02/1999 p.31

Total Film
"...One of Spike's best joints in years. This is confident movie-making..." 10/01/2000 p.101

Boxoffice Magazine 8 of 10
Like so many of Spike Lee's films, Summer of Sam is both beguiling and confounding, an enigmatic blend of banality and brilliance that ultimately manages to overcome its myriad shortcomings through nothing but the sheer force of Lee's visionary direction. Set during the incendiary New York summer of 1977, when "Son of Sam" serial killer David Berkowitz terrorized a city already besought by record temperatures, the film is essentially Lee's attempt to snapshot a specific time and place, capturing the paranoia and anxiety that destroys lives and relationships in a small Bronx neighborhood. That the film chooses to focus on the intangible psychological by-products of fear rather than Berkowitz himself is a strange yet compelling choice that liberates Lee to indulge his penchant for prolonged character studies... While Lee has been faulted in the past for indulging Italian-American stereotypes, here he proves a veritable saving grace, single-handedly transforming the script's ham-fisted archetypes into complex, three-dimensional characters... At the same time, Lee's feeling for the material, as expressed through his usual visual pyrotechnics, is undeniably effective, powerfully communicating the debauchery and malice with which Bronx society of the era was consumed. If Summer of Sam isn't yet the masterpiece that the world has so long awaited from Lee, it is a surprisingly seductive misfire--an awkwardly brave and provocative work of sufficient originality to make it more than marginally recommended. - Wade Major
 
San Francisco Chronicle 9 of 10
Any era is good for the people who were young in it. Director Spike Lee was young in New York's summer of 1977 -- the summer that a psycho calling himself the Son of Sam was going around shooting young lovers in parked cars. The result is Summer of Sam, a colorful, wacked-out film. It's a movie nostalgic for a bad time. Lee captures the glitz and the confusion of living in New York in 1977. The city was in the financial toilet. Crime seemed unstoppable. The sexual revolution seemed like a manifestation of end-of-the-world decadence and anarchy. And into the confusion came this homicidal maniac... The most refreshing thing about Summer of Sam is that it doesn't try to impose a moral or define the limits of its story. It takes its time. Out of nowhere, Lee will toss in a montage (to the Who's "Baba O'Riley") of one character shooting heroin, another smoking pot; of Ritchie strumming his guitar, Reggie Jackson hitting a home run and Berkowitz going around killing people... Lee's relaxed pace pays off. Virtually every scene plays out long enough to have some color. Leguizamo is terrific as a smooth fellow whose weakness of character is slowly making his life unravel, while Brody gives Ritchie a core of integrity underneath the ridiculous surface. Sorvino's best scenes are the wrenching arguments with Leguizamo. Jennifer Esposito comes into her own as the neighborhood slut, but then, all the performances are strong. Lee's pace allows even the minor characters richness and depth. The result is his best movie since Do the Right Thing. - Mick LaSalle