A Case of Identity

Rating: 10/10 (9 May 2019)

Back in the 1970s, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) was the first African-American police officer and later detective in the Colorado Springs police department. Working with a Jewish-American associate Philip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), they infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan which had been trying to become respectable. Stallworth initiated the contact by purchasing a membership by mail and calling national director David Duke (Topher Grace) on the telephone. (Stallworth still carries his membership card in his wallet.) Zimmerman became involved when the situation called for personal contact and especially when Duke himself visited the local chapter. The plot emphasizes a scheme for the likable wife (Ashlie Atkinson) of a local Klan member (Jasper Paakkonen) to plant a bomb at a student rally, but comes at the expense of a romance between Stallworth and Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier), a student at Colorado College in Colorado Springs and president of the Black Students Union. Harry Belafonte appears in a cameo in which his character describes a 1916 lynching that he personally witnessed, and Alec Baldwin in one in which he appears in a Public Service Announcement decrying integration, racial intermarriage, and the influence of Jews on the Supreme Court. Spike Lee directed and co-wrote the screenplay based on Stallworth's 2014 memoir Black Klansman, and he was nominated for Academy Awards in both categories and won the latter. His long-time collaborator Terence Blanchard was also nominated for Best Score.