BlacKkKlansman (2018) [Blu-ray]
Biography | Comedy | Crime | Drama

From visionary filmmaker Spike Lee comes the incredible true story of an American hero. It's the early 1970s, and Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) is the first African-American detective to serve in the Colorado Springs Police Department. Determined to make a name for himself, Stallworth bravely sets out on a dangerous mission: infiltrate and expose the Ku Klux Klan. The young detective soon recruits a more seasoned colleague, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), into the undercover investigation of a lifetime. Together, they team up to take down the extremist hate group as the organization aims to sanitize its violent rhetoric to appeal to the mainstream. Produced by the team behind the Academy-Award (R) winning Get Out.

Storyline: Director Spike Lee's drama was produced by the team behind Get Out and offers another provocative exploration of American race relations. In the midst of the 1970s civil rights movement, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) becomes the first black detective on the Colorado Springs Police Department. He sets out to prove his worth by infiltrating the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan and convinces his Jewish colleague (Adam Driver) to go undercover as a white supremacist.

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, November 9, 2018 Director Spike Lee's (Malcolm X, Do the Right Thing) BlacKkKlansman is a compelling film focused on race relations in 1970s America, but its also an occasionally tonally disparate film that can be as humorously light as it can be maliciously dark. That contrast between funny and frightening helps ease the burden, but not lessen the impact, of the film's examination of racial strife and hate. Lee allows the script to flow and his actors to have fun at the Ku Klux Klan's expense, but when the narrative grows more extreme and the cards are down, Lee makes sure to turn off the comedy faucet and give the film's full attention and respect to the dangerous situations and fight against despicable extremism.

Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) is Colorado Springs' first police officer of color. His first assignment places him in the records room, a dead-end endeavor, but he's quickly promoted to undercover work and given the assignment to attend a political rally featuring flamboyant speaker Kwame Ture (Corey Hawkins). Stallworth's mission is to gauge audience reaction to the calls for violence. There, he meets the president of Colorado College's black student union, Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier), with whom he forms a close bond but does not disclose his identity as an undercover police officer. Stallworth later finds an advertisement for the Ku Klux Klan and calls the number listed. He presents himself as a white man eager to join and is invited to do so. Of course, his skin color would be prohibitive to such an undertaking, so he and the CSPD employ the help of Jewish Detective Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) to pose as Stallworth in person while Stallworth continues to build the relationship over the phone, first with the local chapter Klan president Walter Breachway (Ryan Eggold) and later with the Klan's Grand Wizard himself, David Duke (Topher Grace). As Stallworth and Zimmerman, as Stallworth, become further entrenched in the Klan, one suspicious Klansman, Felix Kendrickson (Jasper Pääkkönen), angles to oust Zimmerman as Jewish.

In BlacKkKlansman, undertones are overtones and subtleties are not-so-subtle. Lee's film builds around challenging topics and it faces them head-on, with plenty of humor to play against the more serious currents that shape the movie. He tells a story of organized bigotry and two men's infiltration into one of the most notorious organizations in American history but finds an agreeable balance between the picture's blunt presentation of racism within the Klan's inner circle and the somewhat lighter moments that play around its periphery. Lee masterfully balances the two and the film would not work without the synchronicity they create. John David Washington, who is the son of Denzel Washington and, before BlacKkKlansman, best known for his role in the HBO series Ballers, commands the screen and the material, much like his father, bringing a passion and wit to the part, understanding both the serious currents in which he finds himself (and into which he has placed Flip Zimmerman) while also using humor almost as a defense mechanism against hate.

Adam Driver, who is one of this reviewer's favorite actors working today (anyone who has yet to see Paterson needs to pick it up when ordering BlacKkKlansman), is Washington's match as the Jewish cop who is pulled into Stallworth's investigation as the in-person go-between. Much of the film's drama comes from his his infiltration of the Klan, posing as a non-Jewish white man who must proclaim, and prove, his hatred for both people of color and for people of Jewish descent. Whether he can maintain his cover, build his character, prove his "worth," and tolerate the endless stream of antisemitism and racism is where the movie is most likely to leave the audience on the edge of the seat, particularly as one of the Klansmen, Kendrickson, immediately suspects that there's something "off" about Zimmerman, who is posing as Stallworth. Improvisation, a vocabulary of hate, pretend violent acts on people of color (namely his partner, Stallworth), and pledges of allegiance to racism and the Klan are what will keep him alive and on mission, with Stallworth never far behind, monitoring the situation through hidden microphones and stepping into action as needed to save Zimmerman when he's caught misspeaking or when Kendrickson demand he take a polygraph test to prove the heritage he claims.

BlacKkKlansman champions black power but also proper and peaceful race relations; many of the film's best scenes involve Stallworth, alongside one or several white characters with whom he works at the police station, laughing at David Duke, who is unknowingly speaking to a black man on the other side of the telephone. Conversely, the film's most challenging scene features an elderly black man named Jerome Turner (played by the legendary Harry Belafonte) telling stories of the Klan's torture of colored people while several Klan initiates are sworn into the organization in a juxtaposed sequence. Lee makes his points sharply and directly but does so with care and consideration for his characters and his audience. Heroes and villains are clear-cut, and the winner to come out of it all is a tremendously entertaining yet very pointed film that was clearly a passion project for Lee, an acclaimed filmmaker who may have just released his best work yet. Universal's Blu-ray is very good, skimpy on the extras but otherwise boasting a high quality 1080p video transfer and a wonderful Dolby Atmos soundtrack. Highly recommended.

[CSW] -3.2- This reviewer said it better than I could:
There's much good about this movie, starting with Ron Stallworth's incredible deception of the Klu Klux Klan. Racism in all its ugliness is powerfully shown. There's a lot of humor at the expense of some really dumb people. Unfortunately, there's a lot wrong with the movie too. Most of this is because the director embellished the true story. I'm not a big fan of directors tinkering with what really happened in order to add their own touch, and then still claim "based on a true story". The result of the tinkering is a very uneven movie, particularly in the apparently "easy" parts of infiltrating the KKK and the "hard" parts where things go wrong. The "easy" parts are, remarkably, mostly the true story. Apparently this wasn't dramatic enough, so a lot of fictional "hard" parts were added to build tension including whole characters and situations. That's bad enough, but the added parts often made no sense, such as having no real origin (like one character's intense suspicions) and no resolution to the dilemma presented - they just seem to go away, are forgotten or have no effect on the inevitable story arc. Many seem to have been thrown in only to make already duped people look even more ridiculous. The characters themselves are, with a few exceptions, just caricatures. It's not hard to figure out what's next since they do exactly what you expect. Eventually the movie just got boring since it all moved to an inevitable and very easy to see end. Ultimately, the movie is maybe an hour of an amazing true and humorous story marred by over an hour of superfluous and poorly executed fiction.

[V-A] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box


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