Spike Lee made his bones in the indie film world by making movies about life in Brooklyn. Films like She’s Gotta Have It and Do the Right Thing set the tone for what eventually became known as his Chronicles of Brooklyn anthology. The director hasn’t explored this particular corner of his film universe since 1998’s He Got Game, however, so it was starting to look like subject matter he had fully explored and put away. That is, until the promotion for Red Hook Summer started. Not only has this film been heralded as being a new inclusion into the Chronicles of Brooklyn, some have been calling it a direct sequel to Do the Right Thing, largely because Lee is appearing in the film as his old character, Mookie. But now that we’ve seen the first trailer, that seems to be overstating things. While Do the Right Thing was a snapshot of youth culture in Brooklyn at a certain moment in time, Red Hook Summer seems to be a much more personal, coming-of-age movie about the journey one character takes. That character is Flik Royale (Jules Brown), a young man from a nice neighborhood in Atlanta who is sent to live with his Bishop grandfather (Clarke Peters) in one of the shadier parts of Brooklyn for the summer.

New York in the summer is intense enough with the heat and humidity that bears down on the city from June to August, but if you are a kid from an upper middle class Atlanta neighborhood suddenly dropped into the Brooklyn projects, summer gets a lot more than intense, and quick. Flick (Jules Brown) is sent to live with his incredibly religious grandfather, Bishop Enoch Rouse (Clarke Peters), who lives in Red Hook, a neighborhood plagued by poverty, gangs and colorful characters (including a well-known pizza delivery boy from another Spike Lee film). Flick is combative towards his grandfather from the start, clearly unhappy about being forced to spend his summer away from home. Bishop Enoch tries to get Flick involved with his church, convinced that if Flick lets Jesus into his life, he will be much happier. Flick resents being made to work during his vacation, but when he meets fellow church member Chazz (Toni Lysaith) his attitude towards helping out and attending Sunday sermons softens a bit.