JUNGLE FEVER
Spike Lee heads up the latest old-but-Blu releases.
After 1990’s slight and occasionally off-key Mo’ Better Blues, Lee rediscovered the issues-fired form of his breakout third feature with his flawed but febrile fifth. Lee tackles interracial desire, addiction, generational conflict, misogyny, corporate prejudice and more with in-the-moment conviction, much-aided by a cast bringing their A-game.
The title references the affair between married Harlem architect Flipper (Wesley Snipes) and ItalianAmerican temp Angie (Annabella Sciorra), a tryst whose ripple effects expose the fractures in their respective families. As Flipper’s crackhead brother Gator, Samuel L. Jackson roars with charisma; Halle Berry is equally electric as Gator’s volcanic lover Viv, and the phantasmagorical crack-den sequence is jaw-dropping. Better still, the “war council” of women lamenting faithless men unfolds like a mini-movie, charged with sorrow and rage.
Even if the result isn’t Lee’s tightest joint, its details sing. Piquant support casting adds to the sense of a melodrama drawn from lived-in threads, with John Turturro and Lonette McKee among standouts. And while DoP Ernest Dickerson’s images crackle with life, Stevie Wonder’s songs help channel the musicality in Lee’s methods: a punchy orchestration of intricate parts, executed with infectious verve. A commentary from film historian Jim Hemphill, a 2009 Lee interview and more accompany the BFI’s BD spruce-up. Kevin Harley