“Do the Right Thing is bright and brazen, and it moves with a distinctive jangling glide,” J. Hoberman wrote for the Village Voice. “Set on a single block in the heart of Brooklyn on the hottest Saturday of the summer, it offers the funniest, most stylized, most visceral New York street scene this side of Scorseseland.” In its portrayal of simmering racial tensions escalating toward tragedy, the film is, in Hoberman’s words, “a daring mix of naturalism and allegory, agitprop and psychodrama.” Lee recalled: “Rosie Perez dancing. People were not ready for the opening of that film. That opening is a part of cinematic history.”