Too neat, dumbed-down, and pretty.

Rating: 6/10 (12 January 2019)

Spike condescends his audience by dumbing-down the narrative in his latest mainstream project.
The premise is solid: a burgeoning revolution in the war against racism, and the elevated actions on either side to actualize results. It's not obvious to me if the "true" story wasn't being introduced NOW to show the obvious parallel to Trump, or if it was a docudrama period-piece to be consumed on its own merit.
There is some high-quality film making here, especially the camera work, staging and a lot of production techniques. Good editing. The capable ensemble had to contend with a script that is a bit stiff and cliched replete with cartoonish characters. Ron Stallworth and Flip Zimmerman are not very credible. Stallworth, a black rookie cop in a time when black cops were frowned upon within the force, seemingly knows more than the rest of his superiors, and is given command over investigative force mere weeks after being a file clerk. His voice sounds nothing like Zimmermans but apparently it fools everyone, including David Duke who prides himself on detecting black dialect. All of the white characters are written as morons which is typical in Spike films. Granted, I don't have much love for the white characters in this film, but some of them are so far over the top Like Andy Landers and Dr. Kennebrew Beauregard, plus a character who borders on being completely mentally challenged who I can't find on the IMDB cast list. Everything seems to fall into place for our protagonist Stallworth, even the end when Landers gets busted out of the blue and completely out of context, to cross some perverbial-T. It was a loose-end that didn't need to be tied. One bright spot: Harry Belafonte makes an appearance to give a history lesson into the atrocities of the Klan and their acceptance into southern white culture, is disturbing, but again, watered-down and grandstanding. Spike needs to take bigger risks with his film-making and stop worrying that he's going to piss-off the wrong white person who green-lights his films, and just go for it, he's got the chops, he simply needs to get himself dirty. As it stands, he's to neat and pretty.