Surprisingly Great

Rating: 9/10 (20 August 2018)

I probably wouldn't necessarily say that this is a challenging film, at least from my perspective, but then again being who I am I don't tend to face discrimination in the way that many people in the world, particularly minorities in developed countries, do. Yet it does amaze me that there are people out there that are so caught up in their own sense of self importance, and their own pride, that they are willing to denigrate others simply because they look, or even act, differently. In a way this isn't so much a film about how a coloured man over came prejudice to achieve greatness, but rather how he played the Klu Klux Klan for a bunch of fools.
Basically he really wanted to become a cop, and was accepted into the police force, but relegated to the evidence room. Sure, he faced quite a bit of discrimination, and the questions that he was asked at the beginning of the film, when he was applying for the position, really did sound as if they were racially profiling him - yet I wonder whether an anglo would be asked exactly the same questions. Sometimes I wonder whether some people take offence at being asked certain character questions when in reality these questions are asked of everybody.
Yet this isn't really the case here either, because he was accepted into the police force, and was even promoted to the rank of detective, even though it had a lot to do with him being able to infiltrate a meeting of the Black Panthers. Once again, one raises the question of whether this is also racial profiling, particularly since the Black Panther's were a militant group, and that while the Black Panthers are being investigated, the Klu Klux Klan is being left alone, or even having its existence denied.
However, while the movie focuses on the African-Americans, this isn't necessarily the only minorities that they are targeting. It is just that they tend to be the most visible. In fact, anybody who doesn't have an Anglo-Saxon heritage is basically going to be targeted by these people. It doesn't matter whether you are a Jew, a Mexican, or an African American - these people basically do not want you around.
So, it makes me wonder sometimes what makes them tick. I suspect it is a fear of those who happen to be different, or more so, it is a fear if them being excluded from society. Yet it does come down to a question of privilege, and in reality, us Anglo-Saxons tend to have much more privilege than many of the minorities (though not necessarily all of them, as is the case here in Australia).
Yeah, I actually though that this was a pretty good movie, and it certainly doesn't take the stance that 'all white people are bad'. The thing with out protagonist is that he doesn't hate the cops - he wants to be one. Sure, he was the first African-American officer in the Colorado Springs police department, but the interesting thing is that people ended up warming to him. Once they got to know him, they realised that not all African Americans are bad people (which is generally the attitude of a lot of people, particularly those that live in the white enclaves).
The thing is that despite the belief that the police unfairly target African Americans, he still believes in the system, which puts him at odds with his girlfriend, who happens to by sympathetic towards the Black Panthers. Obviously, this puts them at odds with each other, and it is left hanging in the air as to what happened between them. Of course, this film was written in response to the rise of far right extremists, not just in the United States, but all over the world. Particularly with the events in Charlottesville where there were clashes between the extreme right and the extreme left. Yet it seems that many actors on the extreme right seem to get away with the crimes that they commit. Whether that is true or not, it is difficult to tell because there is so much obfuscation over the events. Yet the reality is that there does seem to be one narrative for an Anglo criminal, and another narrative for everybody else, and even then that isn't necessarily the case because the same Anglo-narrative also applies to other minorities as well.
It is certainly a film worth seeing, and I did find it quite challenging in places, and it does raise the question of whether much as actually changed over the years.