Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
Strike is a young city drug pusher under the tutelage of drug lord Rodney Little. When a night manager at a fast-food restaurant is found with four bullets in his body, Strike’s older brother turns himself in as the killer. Detective Rocco Klein doesn’t buy the story, however, setting out to find the truth, and it seems that all the fingers point toward Strike & Rodney.
Spike Lee's adaptation of Richard Price's novel is elevated primarily by its outstanding ensemble performances—Harvey Keitel, Delroy Lindo, and Mekhi Phifer all deliver compelling, textured work—and by Lee's characteristically vivid, stylized cinematography that gives the Brooklyn housing projects a visceral, almost expressionistic quality. The plot, while competently constructed as a crime procedural examining inner-city drug culture and systemic injustice, occasionally feels constrained by its genre conventions and doesn't fully escape the shadow of Price's source material. Novelty is moderate: Lee brings his distinctive directorial voice but the crime-drama framework is well-trodden territory, and the film sits somewhat uncomfortably between a prestige character study and a conventional thriller. The ending resolves things adequately but lacks the knockout punch the film seems to be building toward, leaving some emotional and thematic threads only partially realized.