Spike Lee takes a wrong-end-of-the-telescope view of the Son-of-Sam murder spree during a New York City heat wave in 1977: the events in little. (In his introductory and closing remarks, newspaperman Jimmy Breslin witlessly parrots the catch phrase of TV's Naked City: "There are eight million stories in the Naked City, and this was one of them.") We get to witness, not from the best vantage, the murders themselves, with their startlingly loud gunshots, and we get to eavesdrop on the faceless murderer alone in his apartment, howling in harmony with a neighbor's dog. We even, at one point, get to listen in when the dog's ghost enters the apartment and talks to the killer in plain English (voice of John Turturro). But the focus of the movie is much more on a circle of Bronx Italian-Americans who have only the most tangential connection to the case: chief among them a heterosexual hairdresser (John Leguizamo) who enjoys dirty sex but not with his sanctified wife, and a would-be punk rocker (Adrien Brody) who has a secret life as a homosexual stripper. (Mira Sorvino, as the wife, continues her custom of giving more to a role than it demands or deserves.) The off-center focus on small fries could well have been interesting if the fries were interesting, but these are just sub-Scorsese subliterate stereotypes who punctuate their normal conversation with an average of one "fuck" per sentence, and who rise only in the hottest of passions to a higher eloquence: "You linguini-dick motherfucker!" The movie has a little interest as a time capsule (and place capsule): a little disco, a little punk, a little Mafia, a little Reggie Jackson, a little Plato's Retreat, a little drugs, a little blackout, a little yellow journalism. It all adds up to very little. With Jennifer Esposito, Ben Gazzara, Anthony LaPaglia. (1999) — Duncan Shepherd
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