Sundance approaches, and from its website we get our first little glimpse of Red Hook Summer, Spike Lee’s new film. This will of course precede the director’s new take on Oldboy, and is distinctive return to his roots by means of a story told in a summer-scorched Brooklyn. Also notable is that Lee has reportedly resurrected his character Mookie from Do The Right Thing for the film, though whether that’s for a small cameo or for a sizable part isn’t yet clear. We do have a better idea of the overall story of Red Hook Summer though, thanks to this new synopsis:
When his mom deposits him at the Red Hook housing project in Brooklyn to spend the summer with the grandfather he’s never met, young Flik may as well have landed on Mars. Fresh from his cushy life in Atlanta, he’s bored and friendless, and his strict grandfather, Enoch, a firebrand preacher, is bent on getting him to accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior. Only Chazz, the feisty girl from church, provides a diversion from the drudgery. As hot summer simmers and Sunday mornings brim with Enoch’s operatic sermons, things turn anything but dull as people’s conflicting agendas collide.
Playfully ironic, heightened, yet grounded, Spike Lee’s bold new movie returns him to his roots, where lovable, larger-than-life characters form the tinderbox of a tight-knit community. A story about the coexistence of altruism and corruption, Red Hook Summer toys with expectations, seducing us with the promise of moral and spiritual transcendence. Spike is back in the ’hood. – C.L.
The film’s not a short one– the 2hr 15m runtime caught my eye, and it definitely sounds like the kind of wish-fulfillment cinema where a world-wise aging director gets to teach a kid to pull up his pants and respect his elders. I’m still interested to see what Spike does with this environment these days, and where it will put him as a filmmaker immediately before he pushes headlong into the world of studio remakes of foreign films.
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(via JoBlo)