Among the movies that you can find in this list of personal favourites, this is the most recent one. Spike Lee author of cult movies such as ‘Malcolm X’ and 'Do the right thing', and of deep movies that mainly addresses the horrors of racism, tells a story closely connected to facts of true crime news.

Set in 1977, in New York, the environment and characters don’t appear  very different to those of ‘Saturday Night Fever’, although the former have sports cars and a bit more money in their pockets. Hence, the hippie generation has died (maybe all of a sudden) following the forsaking of the Vietnam veterans, the growing engagement in the cold war – like the cutting of a scene in a movie without a gradual transition – and the only sequels are easy sex and use of drugs.

For example De Niro in ‘Bronx’ has thoroughly managed to express the transition between the two epochs: that of the oil haired  toughs of the 50s and the following of the toughs on motorcycles. “Things are changing”, says Chazz Palminteri and we’ll see its full effect in the scene of the brawl in the bar. I know that what I’ve just said may seem a digression and that the majority of the readers won’t see any connection between ‘Bronx’ and ‘Summer of Sam’ than the setting, but according to me cinema also means reading the nuances between the lines, seeing the stories behind the story or maybe to see the Story beyond the plot.

Getting back to our movie, the summer of 1977 is not only characterised by new habits, disco-music or by the suffocating sultriness which envelopes New York. There is also something horrible: he, the raving serial-killer, who kills couples with a 44 and ‘signs’ his crimes as the ‘son of Sam’.

On one side the controversial and overwhelming life of the two young main characters, Vinni and Dionna (John Leguizamo and Mira Sorvino), one the other hand the terror that spreads, murder after murder, whilst the police grope in the dark entangled in the enigmatic provocation of the lunatic.

A horror parenthesis brings us – in one of the central scenes – in the middle of the hallucination of the psychopath, in which a wild black dog orders the crimes.

Lee directs this movie superbly, surprising the most sceptic and showing he is able to look at reality with the eyes of people of every race and political and religious belief. The frame of mind of the Italo-American divided between passionatness, catholic guilt and easy fits of rage is well expressed, without exaggerating with stereotypes and leaving a lot of space for humanity and reflection.

Finally, here is some news on the ‘Son of Sam’, who’s real name is David Berkowitz. The killer of the 44 (other pseudonym of Berkowitz) terrorised the city of New York for thirteen months. After his arrest, he didn’t get away with mental insanity and was sentenced to 365 years of jail in the Sullivan penitentiary in Fallsburg, State of New York. However, it looks like if he’ll be released on parole in 2002!