Response to Movie: Do The Right Thing

Vikki LaMorte

English 1101

29 January 2018

Professor Young

Response to Movie: Do The Right Thing

The movie, Do The Right Thing takes place on a hot summer day in Brooklyn in 1989. In this neighborhood of Brooklyn, there is one white Italian-American family owned pizzeria by a white man named Sal in the neighborhood that is full of different races and cultures. The pizzeria is the spot in the community that has been there for years and that many go to. Throughout the film, there are many different personalities that are present throughout the many different characters of different races and ethnicity backgrounds. Mookie is a younger man living in the neighborhood with his sister, Jade, and works as the pizza delivery man for the pizzeria. He seems to take his job day by day. In film, Mookie was depicted just as I thought that he would like from reading the script. He was one of the major characters in the film. Pino, Sal’s older son is a described as a racist in the film. Pino is the known it all big brother that likes to take control of an racial contempt that seems to arise in the black neighborhood. My reaction to how Radio Raheem was in the film was different than that of what I had imagined him to look like in my mind. Radio Raheem stood for the love and hate theme that was present in the film. He was the symbol of changing the community from hatred and tension to love and peace. From watching what was in the film so far, everything that was in the script was exactly depicted as it was to be in the film. Da Mayor is a man that is perceived to be a drunken old man with nothing else to live for. Da Mayor doesn’t live up to that because of his betterment to society. Early in the film, he gives advice to Mookie at the beginning of the film by simply stating, "Do the Right Thing." This shows a sign of his improvement as a person, but more importantly to society. He believes that one must choose to be good or evil. MLK refers to this because of the betterment to society and freedom for the African American people. In today's society, people can be too quick to judge one another, depending on how he or she looks or what their background might be. More importantly the color of someone else’s skin can bring up the idea pf stereotypes and judgmental thoughts. Overall my reaction to the film was great as it was a story of the tension between races with the relationship to the time period of Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X that brings the film all together as a whole.