BlacKkKlansman

**BlacKkKlansman** is a 2018 film starring John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier and Topher Grace, directed by Spike Lee, written by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott and Lee and produced by Jason Blum, Lee, Raymond Mansfield, Sean McKittrick, Jordan Peele and Shaun Redick.

The film was a financial success as it generated a profit of $16 million.

## Plot

In 1972, Ron Stallworth is hired as the first black officer in the Colorado Springs Police Department. Assigned to work in the records room, he gets bored and asks for the position of an undercover cop. He is assigned to infiltrate a local rally where national civil rights leader Kwame Ture (a.k.a. Stokely Carmichael) gives a speech. At the rally, Stallworth meets Patrice Dumas, president of the Black Student Union at Colorado College. While she takes Ture to her hotel, Patrice is stopped by patrolman Andy Landers, a racist officer in Stallworth's precinct, who threatens Ture and gropes Patrice.

After the rally, Stallworth is reassigned to the intelligence division. After reading about a local division of the Ku Klux Klan in the newspaper, he calls posing as white. He speaks with Walter Breachway, the president of the Colorado Springs, Colorado chapter, but soon realizes not only did he use his real name, but he also has to go and meet the Klan members. Stallworth recruits his Jewish coworker, Flip Zimmerman, to act like him to meet the Klan members while he continues to pose as white on the phone. Under Stallworth's identity, Zimmerman meets Walter, the slightly more reckless Felix Kendrickson (and later his wife Connie), and Ivanhoe, who cryptically refers to an upcoming attack.

Calling Klan headquarters in Louisiana to expedite his membership, Stallworth begins regular phone conversations with Grand Wizard David Duke. Kendrickson suspects Zimmerman of being Jewish and tries to make him take a polygraph test at gunpoint, but Stallworth breaks the Kendricksons' kitchen window to distract them. Stallworth begins dating Patrice but does not tell her that he is a police officer. After passing information to the Army CID about active-duty members, he learns from an FBI agent that two members are personnel stationed at NORAD.

Duke visits Colorado Springs for Stallworth's induction into the Klan. Over the real Stallworth's protests, he is assigned to a protection detail for Duke. Once Zimmerman is initiated, masquerading as Stallworth, Connie leaves the ceremony to place a bomb at a local civil rights rally. The real Stallworth realizes her intentions and alerts local police officers. When Connie notices a heavy police presence at the rally, she puts Felix's backup plan into action and plants the bomb at Patrice's house, leaving it under her car when it will not fit into the mailbox. Stallworth tackles her as she tries to flee, but uniformed officers detain and beat him despite his protests that he is working undercover.

The bombmaker, Walker, recognizes Zimmerman from a prior arrest and informs Felix. He, Felix, and Ivanhoe drive to the house and park next to Patrice's car without realizing that the bomb is hidden under it. When they set it off, the explosion kills all three of them. Zimmerman arrives and frees Stallworth, and Connie is arrested. While celebrating the closed case that night with Patrice, Landers arrives and harasses the two, remorselessly admitting to his assault on Patrice; Stallworth then reveals he is wearing a wire, and Police Chief Bridges arrives and arrests Landers for police brutality.

Bridges congratulates the team for their success but orders them to end their investigation and destroy the records. Stallworth receives a call from Duke, and he insultingly tells Duke he is black before hanging up. While Patrice and Stallworth discuss their future, they are interrupted by a knock on the door. Through the window in the hallway, they see a flaming cross on a hillside surrounded by Klan members. The film then cuts to actual footage of the 2017 Unite the Right rally, where a still-respected Duke is a speaker, and ends with an upside-down American flag that fades to black and white.