Occasionally heavy handed but still well worth watching

Rating: 8/10 (25 August 2019)

This film is inspired by real life events in the 1970s when Ron Stallworth, an officer in the Colorado Springs Police Department, infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan. Officer Stallworth is actually African American and contacted the Klan by phone so when members of the local chapter ask to meet him he has to find a white officer, in this case a non-religious Jew named Flip Zimmerman, to attend any face to face meetings while he continues the phone contact. Flip is welcomed by most of the chapter but one is highly suspicious; Ron eventually finds himself talking to, and ultimately befriending David Duke, the Klan's leader. Ron also gets involved with Patrice Dumas, a local black power advocate who distrusts the police and is in the sights of the KKK.
When I first heard about this film I thought it must be a comedy; the concept sounded too crazy... then I learnt that it was inspired by true events. Like many such films plenty of liberties have been taken with the actual events but the core of the story is true; a black police officer did infiltrate the Klan. The film creates an interesting narrative; from Ron Stallworth joining the police, dealing with racism there then going undercover at a black power student meeting to joining the Klan. The story does provide many amusing moments; mostly at the expense of those that deserve to be mocked, namely the Klansmen and other racists. There is also plenty of real tension as it often looks as though Zimmerman's cover might be blown. There are times when elements of the Klan's history and historical racist incidents are discussed; most potently when a character played by Harry Belafonte tells black students about the real life lynching of a seventeen year old black boy in Texas in 1916. The central cast is solid; most obviously John David Washington and Adam Driver, who play Stallworth and Zimmerman but also those playing the Klansman; they make them believably disturbing rather than just pantomime villains. On the down side the attempts to link what happened then to events in modern America is very heavy handed; we even get an epilogue showing an admittedly terrible event; something that detracted from the main story of the film... still this wasn't enough to spoil my enjoyment of a film that is well worth watching.