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Summer of Sam Reviews
...a scorching melodrama about childhood friends-played by John Leguizamo and Adrien Brody-whose relationship reaches an emotional boiling point.
| Mar 25, 2019
Summer of Sam, for all its flash and well-crafted fury, is only superficially disturbing. It's a nightmare stroll down memory lane: feel-bad nostalgia.
| Mar 2, 2018
Like most of Lee's work, this bites off more than it can chew, but the breadth and energy are impressive.
| Sep 23, 2008
This is trashy exploitation at its clumsiest. Once more, a Spike Lee movie has been undone by the earnestness of being important.
| Apr 27, 2007
Trouble is, the overlong narrative, however entertaining from minute to minute, is a mess.
| Jun 24, 2006
The disappointment with Summer of Sam is not that it's exploitative; it's just difficult to figure out what it's supposed to be about.
Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 22, 2002
A sprawling, brilliantly acted character study which touches on love, friendship and betrayal, while also managing to recreate the last days of disco without a note of self-parody.
| Apr 17, 2001
Lee is a powerful filmmaker who certainly knows how to have an impact on an audience, but those who survive his ministrations are likely to wonder if in this case the battle was worth the bruises.
| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 14, 2001
The script, by Lee, Victor Colicchio and Michael Imperioli, is tighter than those for other Lee movies, but it's still too long and too broad.
Full Review | Jan 1, 2000
Lee's biggest mistake is in the last half-hour, where he extends an already long film with a series of dialogue scenes, which appear to be variations on improv workshops between the actors.
Full Review | Jan 1, 2000
Summer of Sam scatters most of its force by straying far from the compelling, plenty-complex business at hand.
Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Jan 1, 2000
Overstuffed!
Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 1, 2000
A terrific movie: jolting, savage, horrifically funny, nightmarishly exciting but also brainy and compassionate.
Full Review | Jan 1, 2000
Furiously enthralling!
Full Review | Jan 1, 2000
I felt like I wasn't watching it, I was in it.
| Jan 1, 2000
Lee's just not a good enough filmmaker - and finally, not smart enough - to achieve the grand statements that he's apparently after.
Full Review | Jan 1, 2000
If Lee could swap background with foreground, this would be a sensational film.
Full Review | Jan 1, 2000
Lee's best films thrum with a wound-up energy, and Summer of Sam vibrates with fear, guilt and lust.
| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 1, 2000
[A] harrowing, vivid and slow-burning entry in an urban diary that finds Lee operating under a fascinating restraint.
| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 1, 2000