BlackkKlansman (2018) * * *

Directed by:  Spike Lee

Starring:  John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Robert John Burke, Topher Grace, Alec Baldwin, Corey Hawkins, Jasper Paakkonen

The saddest thing about BlackkKlansman is the realization that not a lot has changed on the racial front in America.     BlackkKlansman takes place in 1970s Colorado and ends with footage of 2017 Charlottesville.     Can we say definitively that there has been an improvement?     Spike Lee's film doesn't just recount an unusual police investigation in which a black detective poses as a Klansman, but it reflects societal attitudes on race today.    When white characters say "America First" and "we need to take our country back and make it great again," it is a thinly veiled (heck, not veiled at all) allusion to Trump's dangerous rhetoric.

Ron Stallworth (Washington) is the first black police officer in Colorado Springs, Colorado history.   Soon after being hired, he is made detective and decides, after attending a rally held by former Black Panther Kwame Rule (Hawkins), to contact the local KKK chapter posing as a white racist.    Stallworth is able to pass for white over the phone, but after a face-to-face meeting is arranged with the chapter president, white undercover officer Flip Zimmerman (Driver) is sent in to pose as Stallworth, with Stallworth staked out in a car listening in on wired conversations.

Aside from the usual hateful racial speech you would expect from Klan members, not much happens in the investigation until Stallworth/Zimmerman learn of a plot to kill black civilians and protestors, which includes Stallworth's activist girlfriend Patrice Dumas (Harrier) who is close to Rule and was once accosted by white police officers after Rule's speech.    Stallworth is hiding his identity on two fronts.    He can't be made by the Klan and he can't tell Patrice he is really a cop and not a fledgling civil rights activist.    However, Stallworth does not have to enter the lion's den like Flip, a non-practicing Jew who is the object of suspicion by the insane and scary Klansman Felix (Paakkonen), going so far as to threaten to hook Flip to a polygraph to prove he isn't Jewish. 

Stallworth soon finds himself engaged in hate-filled phone conversations with then-national Klan chairman David Duke (Grace), who thoroughly believes he is speaking to a like-minded white man on the other end of the phone.     In an ironic twist, Duke soon visits Colorado Springs to induct Stallworth into the Klan, and due to death threats against Duke,  the real Stallworth is assigned to be his bodyguard by his superiors.    Grace is an unusual casting choice for Duke, but an effective one; selling the Klan's horrible rhetoric with oily charm and deceptive folksiness.

BlackkKlansman sets the stage for accurate portraits of race relations in the 1970s.    The Colorado Springs police station banner reads, "Minorities encouraged to apply," which Stallworth does, but it is made clear by his superiors, including the mostly tolerant Chief Bridges (Burke) that he is to be the "Jackie Robinson of the Colorado Springs police force", which means he must learn to turn the other cheek when racist comments are hurled at him.    With these scenes, Lee condemns the insular police mentality in which they protect their own at all costs, and there is a satisfying payoff in the end in which the code of silence is broken in unexpected ways.

Lee also shows the Klan for the narrow-minded nimrods they are and doesn't pull punches.    The Washington and Driver performances are daring and walk a fine line between their characters' undercover personas and their inner conflicts.    Flip discusses how going undercover has changed how he views himself and his non-religious upbringing.    He never thought about being Jewish being he wasn't raised Jewish and never even had a bar mitzvah.    But, we see how it pains him to spew out racial epithets even if he sounds convincing enough to the clueless Klan.

The romance between Stallworth and Patrice is less absorbing.   It feels like a tacked-on subplot which we have to endure before getting back to the main event.    In the history of race relations and civil rights in this country, BlackkKlansman shows us a odd footnote.    Maybe this is why the film, with all of the powder keg elements intact, isn't quite as riveting as expected.    The infiltration exposes Duke and the Klan as being trusting idiots, but Duke would shake it off and go on to showcase his views on the national stage.    Lee chose this story to show us how hate groups feel empowered in permissive environments.    Charlottesville showed they have reared their ugly heads again.    Will we ever get to a point in which groups like the Klan and neo-Nazis are non-existent?    Lee seems pessimistic about that possibility, and there is little evidence to suggest he's wrong.