INFILTRATE HATE. 

One year after the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that ended with a murdered counter-protester, this film had its U.S. premiere. Taking place largely in the 1970s, Spike Lee’s most powerful movie in twenty years draws clear connections to present days, showing how the threat of racism simply won’t disappear. One of the final clips has President Donald Trump telling the world in a news clip that he saw a lot of ”good people” among the fascists at the rally. That’s not the only infuriating moment in a film where Lee constantly finds ways to either remind or inform his audience of how much justified anger he carries.

The only Black cop in Colorado Springs
Sometime in the 1970s, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) is the only Black cop in Colorado Springs. After a stint in the records room, he’s bored out of his mind and tells his superiors that he wants to go undercover. Initially hesitant, they agree that having an African-American man working undercover could be of some service. When the radical civil-rights leader Kwame Ture (born Stokely Carmichael) is invited by Black college students to deliver a speech, the police want to keep an eye on him and send Ron to the rally. He’s impressed by Ture’s charisma and strikes up a friendship with Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier), the student who invited Ture to speak.

After deciding that the civil-rights leader poses no immediate threat, Ron’s superiors transfer him to the intelligence division. After talking to a member of the Ku Klux Klan over the phone by chance, Ron and his colleagues enlist the help of a white detective, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), to pose as Ron and agree to a meeting with the Klan…

Making a fool out of a Grand Wizard
The real-life story of how Stallworth infiltrated the Klan with the help of his white partner, making a fool out of then-Grand Wizard David Duke (Topher Grace), is one of those stories that are almost too good to be believed. So Lee decided to make it even more fanciful. There are ingredients here that are a little hard to swallow, including the general clumsiness of the investigation. There’s plenty of effective humor in the film, so why did the director feel the need to go overboard at times, especially near the end where some of the sequences are so over-the-top that you half expect them to be revealed as dreams?

Some of the cultural connections that Lee are addressing come across as somewhat half-baked, including those opening the film, a scene from Gone With the Wind (1939) highlighting the suffering of Confederate soldiers, and the taping of a racist propaganda film featuring a Southern academic (Alec Baldwin) who keeps flubbing his lines. But so much in the film makes us forget our complaints. It looks great; cinematographer Chayse Irvin finds a visually striking way to illustrate how Kwame Ture captivates his young audience with his fiery words.

It has a great cast; Washington (the son of frequent Spike Lee collaborator Denzel) and Driver are standouts as two cops who question the ”skin” they have in this game, as they deal with the Klan and the civil rights movement. And the film also fulfills two main objectives – it makes us laugh and worry deeply for the safety of our undercover heroes.

There’s an outstanding scene in the film’s second half, where a 91-year-old Harry Belafonte plays a civil-rights veteran who lectures college students on the history of the 1916 murder of Jesse Washington and what role one of the true classics of cinema history, The Birth of a Nation (1915), played in the rebirth of the Klan. The movie is a mixed bag, but there’s no shortage of brilliance.

BlacKkKlansman 2018-U.S. 135 min. Color. Widescreen. Produced by Jason Blum, Spike Lee, Raymond Mansfield, Sean McKittrick, Jordan Peele, Shaun Redick. Directed by Spike Lee. Screenplay: Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott, Spike Lee. Book: Ron Stallworth. Cinematography: Chayse Irvin. Music: Terence Blanchard. Cast: John David Washington (Ron Stallworth), Adam Driver (Flip Zimmerman), Laura Harrier (Patrice Dumas), Topher Grace, Jasper Pääkkönen, Ryan Eggold… Harry Belafonte, Alec Baldwin.

Oscar: Best Adapted Screenplay. BAFTA: Best Adapted Screenplay.

Last word: “Months before we had the table reading, I started doing all the research I could. I had the book and [Stallworth] had a couple of things on YouTube I was able to find — some interviews and things like that. So, he has this like ‘Avengers’ feel to him — like the superhero feel. When I met him I was a bit intimidated. I was kind of — I don’t want to say nervous — but I was a bit intimidated like ‘this guy’s real!’  And it was something about him giving me his Ku Klux Klan membership card — he keeps it on his person — that made it even more real about how we’re going to be able to tell this man’s story. Seeing that card just made it that much more special, but not intimidated.” (Washington, Deadline)

IMDb