""We are black, and we are beautiful."

Rating: 8/10 (1 March 2019)

I'm not quite sure how to take this film. Spike Lee has established himself as a controversial film director and activist, and yet of his films I've seen, "Do the Right Thing" and "25th Hour", he seems to offer an even handed approach to the issue of race relations in the country. There are some exceptions here, which I'll get to, but it doesn't come across to me that he sees whites as intrinsically evil. As this picture progressed, I felt sure that newly hired black police officer Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) would eventually become radicalized via his association with Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier), by the message of Kwami Ture/Stokely Carmichael (Corey Hawkins), and the overt racism of fellow cops on the Colorado Springs Police Force, like the low-life Landers (Frederick Weller). But significantly, Stallworth wended his way through various assignments to become an intelligence officer working undercover to expose members of the Klan and dirty cops within the department. Quite remarkably, he had the powerful backing of his superior officers in the department to infiltrate the Klan, and along with fellow officer Phillip 'Flip' Zimmerman (Adam Driver), both managed to negotiate some fairly dangerous situations by thinking on their feet and adjusting to changing circumstances. It came as a unique kind of shock to see the three most racist Klan members of the story get blown up as they thought they'd exact their own brand of vengeance on the Black Student Union leader.
However there are those veiled and overt references to making America great again, echoed by prominent Klan racist and white supremacist David Duke (Topher Grace), former President Ronald Reagan, and current President Donald Trump. That phrase comes across in the story as a trigger for those leaning in the direction of violence to achieve their aims in the quest for racial equality, so from that standpoint, it's difficult to ascertain Spike Lee's overall message. The footage of Charlottesville tends to fuel that message, but the picture's overall theme seems to support the idea of the races working together to achieve fairness, justice and dignity for all. Which makes it rather unfortunate that Lee decided to throw a tantrum at the Academy Awards when this film lost out to "Green Book" in the Best Picture category. Far from getting robbed, Lee went home with an Oscar of his own for Best Adapted Screenplay for this film, and that's not an altogether unsatisfactory outcome for the outspoken director.