Tour De Force by Lee

Rating: 9/10 (1 September 2018)

BlacKkKlansman: A comedy but a very serious one. Director Spike Lee bookends this film with documentary footage, from the 60s at the beginning and ending with with 2017 footage of Neo-Nazis marching through Charlottesville chanting: "The Jews Will Not Rule Over Us" along with an interview with David Duke who features throughout the film.
Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) becomes the first Black undercover officer in the Colorado Police Force. Initially he is sent to infiltrate a meeting where a former Black Panther leader is speaking. Here we come to the first dichotomy: Stallworth very much wants to advance Black Power but he also believes in Law and Order, something which will cause divisions between him and student leader Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier) who he encounters at the rally.
Stallworth moves on to infiltrate the Klan, fooling both local Klan leaders and Imperial Grand Wizard David Duke (Topher Grace) over the phone. His partner Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) takes the part of Ron in actual meetings. Gradually they get more involved in the Klan and uncover a plot to bomb Black targets. Duke may not have been aware of this, make your mind up.
Here we have a history lesson about some dark deeds in the recent past and as the ending shows: they haven't gone away you know. At the times it is only the vein of dark humour which runs through the film which makes it watchable. We come across not just racism but hatred of Jews with one character wanting to make Flip take a lie-detector test to prove that he's not a Jew. Zimmerman's life is constantly under threat through the risk of the exposure of his real identity. Serving members of the military are involved in the conspiracy.
There are racist cops in the film and it shows institutional racism in areas of Law Enforcement but Stallworth and Driver and eventually the Police Chief emerge as the heroes of the film. The identities of the villains are all to clear throughout BlacKkKlansman and they are still there at the post ending documentary coda. Made on a budget of only $15 million this is a tour de force by Spike Lee. 9/10.