BlacKkKlansman Review

Rating: 8/10 (10 September 2018)

I recently saw the new Spike Lee movie BlacKkKlansman, and I'm happy to say it was a great experience watching it. I was somewhat nervous going into the movie due to the fact that most of Spike's other movies were underwhelming to me. I'm happy to say that BlacKkKlansman breaks that trend.
One aspect I never found Spike Lee to be great at is Shot Composition. Even in his movies that I like ( He Got Game, Do The Right Thing), The cinematography seemed very uninspired to me. For BlacKkKlansman the cinematography had to be better because of the time when the movie was set in. After viewing I can confidently say that I really enjoyed the majority of the shots in the movie. The shot were John David Washington's character is in a room were a speech is being given and the camera zooms in on the people's faces and creates a really compelling shot. I also really enjoyed the scene where two people are having a conversation and the shot is split into two dutch angles, and I also loved the shot were two main characters are walking down a hallway a the shot zooms in to them in a way that really emphasizes the tone of the scene. All of these do a great job a helping us believe the time of the movie and is very reminiscent of the Black Exploitation movies that very clearly inspired it.
The acting was great, John David Washington does a phenomenal job as the main character. Adam Driver also provided a great performance and had great chemistry with Washington which was essential to the success of the film. All of the members of KKK gave great performances, Especially Jasper Paakkonen who's role had the potential to be very cringy.
The story of the movie was pretty good for the most part. One gripe I would have is that there is a break in between the end of the second act of the movie and the third act which moved very slowly and was especially annoying because I could clearly tell where the film was going. With that said the final act of the movie is great and the tension is very palpable even for who knew how it ended before hand. The way the movie leaves little clues that come into the third act later is really rewarding for people that pay close attention.
Now for the elephant in the room, what do I think about the messaging in the movie. I'm not going to complain about the movie being preachy because it is very clearly trying to have a message. I was big fan of when the movie pulled very sneaky messages were they make parallel to today in a very clever way, the way that you have to catch the messages yourself makes the movie far more engaging. For the sake of spoilers i'm not going to go into to detail on any of them. The only complaint I have is when it comes to criticizing Trump the movie throws the nuance out the window for painfully obvious lines that are cringy enough that I half expected the characters to wink at the screen. It always annoyed when musicians, filmmakers and other forms of media bash Trump in such a dumb and lowest common denominater way as if to not go over anyone's head. Thankfully there weren't many examples of this.
In conclusion I think that BlacKkKlansman was a great movie that is very poignant for today. Spike Lee really returns to form and I would say this is his best movie yet. I would highly recommend for everyone to see it
Score: 8/10