LEAVE it to Spike Lee, one of the most attention-grabbing, socially and racially conscious filmmakers of his generation, to deliver a film that feels like the lightning bolt we need for our tumultuous times, one that’s unapologetically filled to the brim with polemical anger and frustration as much as it oozes style and swagger.
Set in the early 1970s, it tells the true story of Ron Stallworth (John David Washington, son of Denzel) who crossed a line many felt ought not to be crossed by signing up to become the first African-American police officer in the Colorado Springs Police Department.
Tired of working in the records room at the station, Stallworth demands that he be given a more important assignment. This leads to him being teamed up with white Jewish officer Philip “Flip” Zimmerman (Adam Driver) to work on a dangerous case: Going undercover in the Ku Klux Klan.
Stallworth does the talking on the phone while Zimmerman acts the part at any in-person meetings, lest the Klan discover Stallworth’s skin colour. It’s a case that, astonishingly, would lead Stallworth to having phone conversations with KKK Grand Wizard David Duke (Topher Grace) who has no idea he’s African-American.
Meanwhile, he also goes undercover in a meeting at the Colorado College Black Students Union where leading figure of the Black Panthers, Kwame Ture (Corey Hawkins), is speaking. There he meets the union’s president, Patrice (Laura Harrier), whom he begins to fall for as he tries to balance the two extreme undercover assignments.
Lee has created a film that is kind of all things to all styles; it’s at once a hugely entertaining buddy comedy, a tense undercover crime thriller (Lee expertly plays with audiences’ jangled nerves in the scenes where Zimmerman, and by extension Stallworth, is looked upon with suspicious eyes) and a shockwave dose of dense social, political and racial commentary that reaches every corners of its drama.
The power of the film lies not just in the depiction of the so-called “Organization”, where the more overt hatred is espoused and showcased in vile forms, but also in its exploration of more systemic prejudice. With a charismatic, star-making performance by Washington, Stallworth is fleshed out as we see how he tries to reconcile working for – and believing in the same sense of duty as – a police force where he is in the extreme minority and often derided or dismissed.
It’s also a fascinating look at the idea of coming to terms with your own identity, particularly when it comes to Driver’s more world-weary cop Zimmerman who, through an assignment which sees him nestled with a group that hates Jewish people as much as black people, is forced to wrestle with the fact that he’s never paid much attention to his own Jewish American identity.
In what is Lee’s most piercing effort since 2002’s 25th Hour, he paints decades-old but eternally relevant US history with vibrant brush strokes. It’s an unsubtle film for unsubtle times, all the better for not backing down with what it’s trying to say or how it says it, not least in its final real footage scenes which slam home how, despite this story taking place almost half a century ago, some things just haven’t changed.
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