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Director Spike Lee’s third film, “Do the Right Thing,” hasn’t aged a day since its 1989 release. The film’s misguided views on violence were wrong-headed the second it hit theaters. And the election of President Barack Obama surely puts some of the film’s victimization subtext in fresh perspective. But as sheer entertainment, “Thing” remains a blistering experience, the culmination of every one of Lee’s unique gifts as a filmmaker.

The film’s re-release on DVD June 30 reminds us Lee hasn’t come anywhere close to matching “Thing’s” raw power in the intervening years.

“Thing” stars Lee as Mookie, a disinterested pizza delivery man working on the hottest day of the summer in the Bed-Stuy section of Brooklyn. Pizza shop owner Sal (Danny Aiello) is thoroughly old school, and his bickering sons (John Turturro and Richard Edson) are hardly paragons of virtue. But Sal doesn’t have hate in his heart for his customers, who are almost all black. His food has fed them for years, he says with pride.

But a local radical (Giancarlo Esposito) doesn’t like Sal’s shop because it features a gallery of Italian-Americans on the wall – and no African-Americans. The disgruntled customer isn’t the only one on edge. The sweltering heat has everyone in a foul mood. It’s the perfect catalyst for what follows.

Lee’s films routinely polarize audiences and critics alike, but often at the expense of narrative and character development. Here, every Lee element falls right in place.

Cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, a director in his own right (”Bulletproof,” “Surviving the Game”), burnishes the screen with shades of brick orange to evoke a melting pot bubbling over.

Scene after scene crackles with out-sized characters, often anchored by terrific actors (Ossie Davis, Samuel L. Jackson among them). The film helped introduce Rosie Perez, Jackson and Martin Lawrence to the movie going public.

There’s not a wasted frame in the film. Every sequence has a purpose and a pulse, and the debates it inspired 20 years ago are still raging in one form or another today.

“Do the Right Thing” slips in a few telegraphed punches, like a brick wall emblazoned with the message “Tawana told the truth,” a reference to the racially charged Tawana Brawley case of the era.

The DVD features the usual gaggle of extras, from commentary by Lee and a self-congratulatory reunion of the cast.

Lee’s racial politics typically rub conservative audiences the wrong way. But with “Do the Right Thing,” Lee proved he could make a film that rose above ideological battle lines.