BlacKkKlansman is a hilarious, racially charged bomb lobbed at the dumb racist America that still feels the need to make its presence known. And naturally, the fuse was lit by none other than Spike Lee.
As far back as I can remember, the now-veteran black filmmaker has spent his career trying to tell y’all that some white people have done and are continuing to do some sinister, racist shit. But considering how shocked and surprised many were at Trump’s election, it would seem that Lee’s words fell on deaf ears. Many white folks are currently going to great lengths to expose their ass-backward prejudices, usually in the most insanely stupid ways. (Please tell me you saw the video a black dude captured of a white dude calling him the N-word from his van — a van that has the name of his business and his phone number printed on the driver’s side door.) With BlacKkKlansman, Lee is simply reminding us not only that extreme racial intolerance has been around for decades, but also that it’s practically as American as apple pie.
BlacKkKlansman is inspired by the true story of Ron Stallworth, played here with suave, fly-ass 1970s gusto by an Afro-sporting John David Washington (aka Denzel’s son). He’s the Colorado Springs police department’s newest recruit, and the only cop of color. Originally stuck down in the records room, he gets a shot at outside police work when he’s assigned to go undercover at a black student union meeting, where the keynote speaker is Kwame Ture (Corey Hawkins, in a brief but mesmerizing performance), previously known as civil rights icon Stokely Carmichael.
While the cops are worried these militant brothas and sistas might start a riot, Stallworth sets his sights on the town’s real menace, the Ku Klux Klan. In his best white voice, he calls up the local KKK rep and tells him he’s white, racist as hell and wants to join. He then dispatches Jewish detective Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) to stand in for Stallworth and meet face to face with these so-called pure white warriors. Meanwhile, Stallworth gets so deeply embedded with the Klan that he becomes a phone buddy with then-KKK leader David Duke (Topher Grace, who plays the role in amusingly arrogant/ignorant fashion).
While Lee has said he doesn’t consider BlacKkKlansman a comedy, it is ruthlessly funny. Then again, you just have to laugh at how Lee basically puts white paranoia on blast and exposes how absurd — and absurdly terrifying — it can get. Worth noting: It’s awesome how the best comedies of the summer (BlacKkKlansman, Sorry to Bother You and Blindspotting) are all funky, sidesplitting satires made by filmmakers of color, and basically revolve around black men trying to move up in the world without being crushed by power-mad, idiotic white entities.Â
With help from several other screenwriters and Get Out mastermind Jordan Peele, who served as producer, Lee has once again cleverly flexed his genre-bending muscles. Much as he did with 2015’s underrated farcical/musical whatzit Chi-Raq, the director melds comedy and tragedy to come up with entertaining and thought-provoking cinema. Lee recently stated that he considers his film to be reminiscent of subversive satires by the likes of Stanley Kubrick (Dr. Strangelove) and Sidney Lumet (Network), but BlacKkKlansman actually has more in common with corrosive, counterculture dark comedies like Robert Downey Sr.’s Putney Swope and Ivan Dixon’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door. Those flicks also feature badass black protagonists sneaking into white organizations to disrupt shit from the inside.
But BlacKkKlansman’s ending is where Lee nixes the laughs and, as usual, throws in a jarring gut-punch. He shows recent news footage of people rioting, fighting, getting killed in the streets, and going toe to toe with the neo-Nazis, white nationalists and other 21st-century racists who have come out of the closet thanks to our current commander-in-chief. Back in Stallworth’s days, these guys were wrapped in sheets and burning crosses. Now they’re carrying TIKI Torches and proudly showing their punchable faces.
With blatant racism becoming increasingly en vogue, BlacKkKlansman is more than a so-insane-it’s-got-to-be-true movie. It’s a rallying call for everyone who isn’t cool with all this hate to follow Ron Stallworth’s lead — and take these mufuckas down.
