Visionary filmmaker Spike Lee is at the top of his game in this film about a racially divided neighborhood facing a scorching summer heat wave. On the hottest day of the year, the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn becomes a crucible for the wide-ranging racial, social and economic beliefs of its residents. During a 24-hour period that changes lives forever, the neighborhood’s tenuous equilibrium boils over into a showdown between longtime business owner Sal (Danny Aiello) and the neighborhood’s African-American majority. In a slyly funny and riveting expose of racial tensions in the inner city, Lee unflinchingly confronts profoundly sensitive issues as violence threatens to explode against a throbbing musical backdrop.