I swear I'm not a lib but the movie's ending is written absolutely horribly.
The basic defense of the ending is that the level of violence Sal and Raheem faced for their respective crimes was unfair. Sal got his property damaged, Raheem lost his life. I completely agree with this. It highlights an important disparity. HOWEVER, literally 5 minutes before Raheem is killed, he was trying to kill Sal for breaking his stereo.
The message I got from the movie was "Both of these characters got the karma they deserved. Raheem tried to murder someone over property and was murdered by the police. Sal destroyed someone's property and got his property destroyed."
I have no idea how they fucked up the ending this badly. All you had to do was have Raheem vandalize Sal's store instead of attempted murder.
Am I just interpretting this movie wrong? Is there a detail I'm missing? I sincerely doubt this was the intended effect but I can't see it any other was.
I won't take away from his mechanical chops as a director, dgmw; but I strongly feel the large majority of Lee's filmography is just... Lib slop, with the occasional semi-based release that makes people think he's got radical credentials. Bamboozled, I feel, was Spike's internal reckoning with that fact.