| 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
-  for strong graphic
violence and sexuality, pervasive strong language
and drug use
|
