Spike Lee's perhaps most significant work after "Malcolm X"!

Rating: 7/10 (1 September 2018)

Legendary director Spike Lee has steadily made movies for some 35 years but it's been a good while since he was a true household figure.
Younger audiences may not even recognize the name although he was considered something of a wunderkind and pioneering black filmmaker way back in the 1980's and the first half of the 90's.
Having premiered at this year's Cannes festival and received six-minute standing ovation, "BlacKkKlansman" has turned out to be Lee's big comeback "joint", and deservingly so.
It's a timely and sharp overview of racism in the modern U.S. society but also a pretty damn fine intellectual comedy in its own right.
Despite the controversial topics such as racial inequalities and sticking it to Ku Klux Klan, what we have here is a long and talky movie mostly free of action, graphic violence or (er) real suspense.
Relying mostly on dialogue may sound like a weakness but Lee has really taken the most out of the both material and colorful cast led by promising newcomer John David "son of Denzel" Washington.
We also have this current hot indie star Adam Driver and also probably the most interesting movie performance by Topher Grace that you will ever see.
The social satire conveyed is Lee's usual but crisp indeed, including the horrifying and unexpected epilogue which kind of puts the central message in new, stronger perspective.
The dialogue is sharp and there's lots of it, the cast brave and committed - in fact, it's probably one of the better ensemble movies that one may catch in cinemas this year. The comedy is in the details - how the characters move, talk, and react to situations.
And last but not least, "BlacKkKlansman" is also a pretty cool period piece.
The true events have been moved from the end of the 1970's to the beginning, which enables to add "disco age" color to the atmosphere, from jeans, jackets and big afro wigs to blaxploitation movies to student marches, overt racism and police violence.
Lee is clearly nostalgic for these times, probably because of freshness of students being political and really trying to change the society.
Then again, the central themes used here are evergreen - such as readiness to stand up for what one believes in or how belonging to groups can change one's attitudes and perspectives
Based on the ambition and depth of social criticism it dares to offer, "BlacKkKlansman" feels like a true event movie, sort of Lee's new "Malcolm X" (starring Denzel Washington).
Luckily for us, the storytelling is more hip, and the movie itself shorter by a whole hour.