GET ON THE BUS

title: GET ON THE BUS

year: 1996

cast: Ossie Davis, Albert Hall

writer/director: Spike Lee

rating: ***1/2

I hate most Spike Lee films and I hope I'm not arrested for a "hate crime" to admit that I think he's very overrated. His "joints" seem like student films to me, and not very good ones. But this movie was great. It's not so much a road-trip as a character-study and it does both perfectly. Funny how it's slipped under the radar in the Spike canon... it's the only one I enjoy. The plot centers on a group of black men going cross country to the million-man-march and their "adventures" along the way, which consists of bickering and probing into each character's personality-traits as they all sum up a little bit of this and a little bit of that: thus defining one entire human being in the end. The final shot involving a chain falling to the ground in front of Lincoln's statue would seem forced or corny or heavy-handed, but it's brilliant.