Man, this is long and heavy, and it really lays it on you like Spike Lee thinks it is. After delightful credits, pegged to street signs, and a stylish opening, this one seems to go on for hours and hours. A savage film that sometimes resembles a silent, it's a mess of drugs, adultery, violence and murder and you're never quite sure that its characters' motivations are what Lee thinks they are. The film's racist attitudes will sit uneasily with some audiences, and its characters - or, rather, caricatures, rarely ring true. Wesley Snipes heads a huge star cast as the upwardly-mobile architect who eventually emerges unscathed from an affair with his temp secretary (Annabella Sciorra) brought on by late nights and takeaway suppers. Of course, he goes back to his wife, while she must crawl back to the father who beats her unmercifully - and loses her boyfriend into the bargain. Black is beautiful, says Lee, and a white girl who wants an affair with a black man may get what she deserves. Subplots abound, if you can follow them, as the dialogue is screeched at ear-splitting level and seems to consist mostly of hysterically shouted four-letter words. If this is the fever, man, hand us the antidote.


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