‘Do the Right Thing’ is our chance to see him in a type of role he has never reprised again.
Watching ‘Do the Right Thing’ today is like entering a treasure chest of memories. The comedy of everyday life Spike Lee about racial tensions in a Brooklyn neighborhood is full of faces that have become very well known over time, such as Samuel L. Jackson, Martin Lawrence and John Turturro.
The cast also includes Giancarlo Esposito as Buggin Outa young African-American radicalized against the presence of Italians in his neighborhood. It is a secondary role in a fairly choral film, but his role is one of the most iconic and fun in the film. Here you can see the scene for which he is best known, in which he gets angry because a white man from the neighborhood stepped on his Jordans.
In addition to how different it is to see him so young (taking into account that the film was released in ’89 and he was born in ’58, he would have been 30 years old when this was filmed), It is surprising to find the actor in a very different range which is how we have known him over the years. Time passes and you won’t always be able to play a local kid, but his comic side and his self-confidence is something that we have missed so much in his career that it almost seems like we are watching another actor.
In recent years it seems that Giancarlo Espósito can only play one role: that of imposing villain with a stake face. The shadow of ‘Breaking Bad’ is lengthened in later roles that have tried to capture that magic with, it must be said, quite successful, such as Moff Gideon in ‘The Mandalorian’ or Antón Castillo in the video game ‘Far Cry 6’ . Even in animation this formula is repeated, playing the villains Faraday and Lex Luthor in ‘Cyberpunk: Edgerunners’ and the ‘Harley Quinn’ animated series, respectively.
Although we miss not seeing another side of the actor, He is probably comfortable in his pigeonholing as a popular villain.. The truth is that at that time it was easier to see him in roles without names like this one than in others that had a weight in the plot. He recently declared that his life before ‘Breaking Bad’ was not in a good place, and that his poverty due only to supporting roles had led him to consider extremes such as taking his own life so that his children could collect the insurance. Fortunately, that is no longer a problem for him.
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