BlacKkKlansman Review

The summer movie season is winding down, which means Awards season is right around the corner. Come September we'll see all the major festivals take place where we'll get a good idea what our real contenders are before they start showing up in theaters towards the end of the year. Occasionally we'll get a major contender jumping the gun by hitting theaters in August right before the festival season and that can be some cause for concern when it comes to Awards season politics. All the old geezers in the Academy usually forget that movies get released before November, which is annoying for those of us normal people who care about the other 10 months, too. But in the case of "BlacKkKlansman," this is going to be a hard one to forget even though Focus Features jumped the gun a bit after the movie won big at Cannes back in May, taking home the Grand Prix award, the second most prestigious award behind the Palm d'Or. I say this is going to be a hard movie to forget because this is a Spike Lee film with a strong political message about racism in today's society, a subject matter that nearly won "Get Out" best picture at this year's Oscars despite being a February release from last year. So forewarning, if you don't want to dive into politics, then leave now.

What probably jumps out to you most when you see this title is the stylization that specifically highlights "KkK" right in the middle. Because, yeah, this is a movie about the KKK. Klu Klux Klan. Specifically this is a crazy true story about a man named Ron Stallworth, who in 1972 became the first black officer to be hired onto the Colorado Springs police force. Now when I say "crazy true story," that sounds like some sort of marketing gimmick that some trailers use to grab your attention, but in this case I mean it quite literally. The most simple version of this story is that shortly after being hired onto the police force, Stallworth finds an ad in the paper to join the KKK, so he calls up the local chapter, pretending to be a white man who hates black people, and gets his foot in the door. How he manages to accomplish this is with the help of fellow white officer Flip Zimmerman, played by Adam Driver, who goes to all the face-to-face meetings with the Klan while Stallworth handles everything over the phone. Along the way are his interactions with a local Black Panther organization, or at least a black power organization similar to the Black Panthers, and his phone calls with David Duke, the KKK Grand Wizard, who helps expedite Stallworth's membership.

So yeah, this is some very heavy stuff here. The idea that Stallworth has here is to infiltrate the KKK, acting as an undercover officer to figure out what they're up to in hopes to stop them in case they have something drastic planned or perhaps simply to learn all about their inner workings. There's a lot of really fascinating side arcs woven throughout the movie that help keep you engaged for the entire run time. The first side arc is Stallworth's interactions with the local black power group. Before his interactions with the KKK, Stallworth is assigned to go undercover to a local rally where Stokely Carmichael, then going by the name Kwame Ture, gives a speech about black power. At the rally, Stallworth meets Patrice Dumas, who is the president of the black student union at Colorado College. The two of them have a lot of interactions throughout the movie which adds a lot of drama as she is 100 percent against the police, as their organization sees them as the enemies due to their long history of mistreatment of black people. Stallworth doesn't reveal to her at first that he's a black police officer trying to make a difference from within. Thus the two of them have the same goal of stopping racism, but very opposing means of getting it done.

The main arc is, of course, the infiltration of the KKK. I went into this movie expecting this to be intense on the level of last August's "Detroit," which has a lot of brutal violence with the racist cops holding the group of people hostage in the hotel. "BlacKkKlansman" is actually not a very violent film, but it's a real heavy film when the scenes are focused on the KKK meetings because the movie doesn't hold back in showcasing how vile and disgusting these people are with their everyday conversations. I have a hard time with people being racist and intolerant, so being forced to listen to such brutal language makes me want to stand up and rebuke them and somehow beat it into their thick skulls that these are normal, good people they're talking about who are being judged based on their skin color, race, nationality, upbringing and so forth. The idea of white supremacy is such an awful way of thinking. But as an onlooker to this whole ordeal, there's nothing someone like me can do while watching this film but to sit and watch. I personally have an optimistic outlook towards human beings. I like to think people are genuinely good. But then I watch movies like this and it saddens me to learn of how awful many people are.

What makes this movie so great is that you can sense these same feelings from Adam Driver's character and Ron Stalloworth, who is played by John David Washington, son of Denzel Washington. One of the other interesting arcs inside this is that Driver's character is Jewish, a group who is also hated by the KKK. Yet he has to sit there and deny that he's Jewish and pretend that he hates Jewish people and black people. He holds his ground really well because he knows they're attempting to accomplish some great things in the long run, so he needs to persevere and keep the act going. Yet when he's back in his normal life, you can feel the honest pain. This is some dang good acting by Adam Driver, who is an actor I've gained a lot of respect and appreciation for long before the world came to know him as Kylo Ren. He's a great character actor and has proven time and time again that he is quite diverse with both comedy and drama. He's really good at being broken and evil while also being able to perfectly pull off being a hero. Personally I think Kylo Ren is a fascinating character due to how well Driver is able to act like he's broken and hurt. But then we see him in something like this where he's perfect at pulling off one of the most respectable and likable cops on this force.

And then we have John David Washington, who is a revelation in this film. Like the rest of the world, I've loved his father Denzel for a very long time as I'd say Denzel is one of the greatest actors to ever work. And it now seems apparent that acting comes in the genes because John David is so good at being calm, cool and collected, although you know he's about to explode within. His girl that I mentioned earlier, played brilliantly by "Spider-Man: Homecoming" actress Laura Harrier, is more of the fiery, loose cannon variety, but he knows exactly what to say to her. And it's those moments that made me glad that the movie chose not to make the police the villains. There are good police officers in the world. At the same time, though, Laura Harrier's character is sexually harassed by a certain police officer early on, the same officer who also harasses Ron Stallworth, so you can also see where she's coming from. The other great interactions that John David pulls off excellently is when he's talking to David Duke, the national KKK leader. He manages to sweet talk him into making him believe that he is genuinely racist and deserving of being in the KKK. Speaking of David Duke, that must've been a really difficult role for Topher Grace to pull off, so major props to him.

Overall, the feeling that you get from this movie is a feeling of disgust. Disgust that these people existed and acted in such an awful way. But the interesting thing about their specific portrayal is that the movie makes the KKK members look and act very normal. They aren't portrayed as maniacal demons who were born without a heart and soul. They are portrayed as average Joes, like your neighbor down the street with normal lives and normal personalities, who just happen to also be extremely racist when they get together among themselves. Often we think that racism and civil rights was a thing of the past. We say America was awful back in the 1800's when slavery was allowed. America was awful back in the 50's and 60's when blacks were treated so poorly. America was awful back in the 1970's when these KKK people were prevalent. But today in 2018 we've got it all figured out. We're past all that. A lot of times these historical movies about slavery and civil rights can leave us with that mindset. But "BlacKkKlansman" gives us a glimpse of how and why people can still be racist today. Perhaps good ole average Joe across the street who is goofy and fun to hang out with has some deep, secret feelings of hatred and anger that you never knew of.

And I honestly think the movie does a great job of accomplishing all of this before the major stinger at the end, which I have to talk about. There's a way the movie could've resolved which would've made you angry at society for being so awful and certain elements of the police force for letting people this awful get away with what they're doing. That would've been a solid ending. But then there's more. And this does get into spoiler territory, so beware of that. But again, I can't leave this review without talking about it. Attached onto the end of the film, after our story in the past resolves, is the footage of Charlottesville. We see the KKK and Neo Nazi rallies last year with groups of people chanting, "Jews will not replace us!" We see the violence in the street with the car driving into the group of people, killing one innocent human being. We see footage of Donald Trump responding to all of this, saying that there's good and bad people on both sides, refusing to condemn the Nazis and the KKK. We see footage of David Duke in 2017 praising the actions of Donald Trump, stating that he's excited to get America back to where it should be. That's me paraphrasing because I can't remember David Duke's exact quote. And suddenly the reality of it all hits you like a ton of bricks.

When the end credits of this movie finally started rolling by, my whole theater was stunned silent. No one wanted to make a move or a sound. There's no round of applause. Just silence as we're all taking in what we just witnessed. Here we just watched a movie about the KKK and how awful they were back in the day, but then we realize that Spike Lee wasn't interested in showcasing how awful the past was. He's interested in showcasing how awful today is. And he very cleverly uses the past to show us a story where we are all on the same page with how awful the KKK was, but then informs us that today is no better than the 1970's. In doing so, Spike Lee throws all the subtlety out of the window and forces the conversation to happen. Everyone is going to be walking out of the theater talking about Donald Trump, David Duke, the KKK and everything else related to racism in 2018. Thus this is a movie that is so powerful and poignant to today's issues that it almost supersedes a number grade. I might have slight issues with the length of the movie and the narrative pacing at points, but that almost seems irrelevant. It's a guaranteed conversation starter and is thus one of the more important movies of the year. Yet I will give it a grade anyways and that grade is a 9/10.