Nobody crafts an opening credits sequence like Shelton “Spike” Lee. In “She’s Gotta Have It,” photo stills of old-school Brooklyn are accompanied by his father, the legendary jazz composer Bill Lee. BK local Rosie Perez busts out her hip hop-boxing moves to Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” at the start of “Do the Right Thing.” “Clockers” starts with a montage of taped-off Gowanus crime scenes as Marc Dorsey sings “People in Search of a Life.” Kids run through the Crayola-hued streets of 1970s Fort Greene as The Stylistics sing “People Make the World Go Round” in “Crooklyn.” “Da Sweet Blood of Jesus” begins with the gorgeously fluid dancing of Charles “Lil Buck” Riley set against the Red Hook waterfront. It’s one of the auteur’s many signatures: that big, beautiful heart worn proudly on his sleeve from the moment he fires each film’s starting pistol.
Relatively speaking, the opening credits sequence of “Chi-Raq” is pretty straight-up. I suspect this is not just because it is set in Chicago but because Spike is grinding his biggest axe since 2006’s very fine “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts,” which channeled the righteous anger of New Orleans residents after Hurricane Katrina. In bold, primary hues, the lyrics of “Pray for My City” – It’s Chi-Raq and my city’s lost/ I can’t fall victim to Satanflash – flash across the screen as they’re rapped by Nick Cannon, who plays the film’s titular character, the head of a fictional gang known as the Spartans. His street moniker stems from Chicago’s insidious nickname, which references that the number of the city’s homicides surpasses the number of American soldiers dead in Iraq. Continue Reading →
