Here we have two movies about affairs back to back – this time around it's Spike Lee directing (and co-starring) with Wesley Snipes, who is a happy family man until he meets an Italian-American woman at work (Annabella Sciorra) and ends up sleeping with her. The rest of the film details their trials and tribulations when Snipes loses his family, moves in with Sciorra, and both deal with racism re: mixed couples.
Being a Spike Lee flick from the 90s this is not just about white people rejecting a mixed couple. It's also about discrimination between lighter skinned and darker skinned blacks people, black women disapproving of black men dating white women, Sciorra's Italian-American family treating her like a slave, ridiculing her "weak" pre-Snipes boyfriend (John Turturro) and, of course, being racist.
There's also a subplot with Samuel L. Jackson as Snipes' crack-addicted brother and how his addiction leads him to disappoint and take advantage of his otherwise peaceful parents (Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee).
As usual, whether dealing with comedy or drama or both at the same time, Lee takes things to operatic heights, with the help of an overactive Terence Blanchard score. As usual, I admired this – the most recent Lee flick I saw was CHI-RAQ, and that was similarly over the top, divisive among viewers because of it, but that was exactly what I loved about it. If you're gonna go, go for broke.
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