A pair of new images from Spike Lee's 'Red Hook Summer'

Initially described as being a "spinoff" or "continuation" of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, his highly anticipated Red Hook Summer has grown considerably since then. We're hearing less about the return of Lee's popular Mookie character, and a more thorough fleshing out of the plot. With Sundance on the way, a pair of new images have been released from the film, as well as a more thorough synopsis.


PLOT: 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.

It's good to see Spike getting back to the smart, insightful, personal films from early in his career. While Spike has simultaneously taken himself out of the mainstream with documentaries and scratched his box office itch with movies like Inside Man, there has been a serious void in strong, well-told African-American films that has unfortunately been filled by Tyler Perry rubbish. Hopefully Red Hook Summer will begin to reverse all that. 

In an interesting side note, Spike is doing something totally different by having Bruce Hornsby score the entire soundtrack, rather than his usual music coordinator in Terence Blanchard.. I can't wait to hear how that comes together.  For now, feast on these  two new images from Red Hook Summer, and hopefully somebody will explain that boy's haircut to me before the film opens.