Starring Lee, Wesley Snipes, Annabella Sciorra, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Samuel L. Jackson, Lonette McKee, John Turturro, Frank Vincent, Tim Robbins, Brad Dourif, Giancarlo Esposito, Debi Mazar, Michael Imperioli, Anthony Quinn, and Halle Berry and Queen Latifah in their film debuts, Jungle Fever explores the beginning and end of an extramarital interracial relationship against the urban backdrop of the streets of New York City in the early 1990s.

One day at his office, the Mast & Covington architecture firm in mid-town Manhattan, Flipper discovers that an Italian-American woman named Angela "Angie" Tucci from Bensonhurst has been hired as his temp secretary.

Initially upset at being the only black person, he relents when senior partners Jerry and Leslie remind him that hiring is based on ability, not race.

Angie's quiet fiancé Paulie Carbone co-manages a corner grocery store/cafe and newsstand and lives with his elderly widowed father Lou.

The next day, Flipper demands that Jerry and Leslie promote him to partner, but they deny his request, and he resigns, telling his employers that his ideas have made the firm very profitable.

Drew learns about Flipper's affair through Cyrus's wife Vera and ejects him from their home, forcing him to move in with his father, Southern Baptist preacher The Good Reverend Doctor Purify, and his mother, Lucinda.

Mike reluctantly allows Angie to return home, and Flipper, unaware of his own family tragedy, unsuccessfully tries to mend his relationship with Drew.

A few months after the murder of Yusuf K. Hawkins on August 23, 1989, Spike Lee began conceptualizing Jungle Fever, jotting down ideas and eventually organizing them into scenes on index cards.

Lee reportedly crafted the character "Vinny," Paulie's tough friend, drawing inspiration from Joseph Fama, the teenager responsible for Hawkins' shooting.

Additionally, certain aspects of architect Flipper Purify were influenced by cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, Lee's longtime friend and collaborator, who studied architecture at Howard University.

[4] Lee initially filmed a prologue addressing racial issues, but at the encouragement of distributor Universal Pictures, he decided to remove the "offending" scene from the $12.5 million production.

[4] The film garnered mostly positive reviews from critics, with particular praise for Samuel L. Jackson's performance as crack addict Gator, which is often considered to be his breakout role.

The site's consensus states: "Jungle Fever finds Spike Lee tackling timely sociopolitical themes in typically provocative style, even if the result is sometimes ambitious to a fault.

[16] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote: "Jungle Fever contains two sequences - the girl talk and the crackhouse visit - of amazing power.