Spike Lee manages a jazz band composed of trumpeter Denzel Washington, Wesley Snipes on sax, Radio Raheem on bass, Sweet Dick Willie on drums and Giancarlo Esposito on keys, and I’m fine, I’m very happy with all this, don’t need any kind of storyline. But we get one anyway, with Spike’s gambling debts and poor management, Snipes wishing to lead his own group, and Denzel juggling two girls: Joie Lee and Cynda Williams (later of the Arkansas-set One False Move). Movie is heavyhanded with its ideas, everyone telling Denzel that he doesn’t know what he wants in life. He gets what he gets – busted in the face by Sam Jackson while trying to defend Spike, ending up with a family with Joie and no music career, overall a halfway decent script, but with ten of my favorite actors and some of the greatest scene staging of the decade, an excellent movie. In Rosenbaum’s heavy jazz-analysis review he reports the movie was to be titled A Love Supreme “until Coltrane’s widow denied him permission, reportedly because of the film’s use of profanity.”