A successful and married black man contemplates having an affair with a white girl from work. He's quite rightly worried that the racial difference would make an already taboo relationship even worse.
Acting
Samuel L. Jackson's Gator is devastating—crack-era Shakespeare.
Direction
Spike's camera prowls, judges, and mourns in equal measure.
Writing
The dinner table scenes are masterclasses in escalating tension.
Director
Spike Lee
Wesley Snipes
Flipper Purify
Annabella Sciorra
Angie Tucci
Spike Lee
Cyrus
Ossie Davis
Reverend Purify
Ruby Dee
Lucinda Purify
Samuel L. Jackson
Gator Purify
Lonette McKee
Drew
John Turturro
Pauline Carbone
Frank Vincent
Mike Tucci
Anthony Quinn
Lou Carbone
Halle Berry
Vivian
Tyra Ferrell
Orin Goode
Veronica Webb
Vera
David Dundara
Charlie Tucci
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Samuel L. Jackson was literally fresh out of rehab when he played Gator; Spike wrote the part specifically for him after their work together in School Daze.
The 'Stevie Wonder' title track and that brutal crackhouse sequence became instant shorthand for early-90s Black cinema's willingness to show what Cosby-era respectability politics refused to acknowledge.
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