Almost every year, there would be movies made about the civil rights movement in the USA in the 1960 and 1970s. Commonly they would be about prominent activists like Martin Luther King or Malcolm X. However, this year director Spike Lee comes up with this remarkably fresh take on this contentious period in recent American history. What is better news is that this movie finally brings Spike Lee an Oscar nomination for Best Director and Best Picture.
The year is 1978. Ron Stallworth was an African-American police officer, the first one in Colorado Springs, Colorado. When he saw an ad in the local paper that the Ku Klux Klan chapter in his area was recruiting members, he called the indicated phone number, pretended to be white and applied for membership. When they called for a face-to-face meeting, he sent his white colleague Flip Zimmerman to stand in for him. As long as their ruse was working, the police had inside information about the Klan's planned activities.
This was a most audacious yet very entertaining film directed by Spike Lee, who is finally nominated by the Academy for Best Director for the very first time. He hit the big time thirty years ago with an Oscar nomination for his original screenplay for "Do the Right Thing" (1989) very early in his career. but since then, there was only one more nomination for Best Documentary Feature in 1998 for "4 Little Girls." Lee teamed up with Jordan Peele (director of "Get Out") as producer to make this film based on the memoirs written by Stallworth himself and published in 2014.
With his strong performance here of Ron Stallworth, John David Washington came out from under the shadow of his father, Denzel Washington. His Ron Stallworth was a smart and cool cat, confident and fearless against the odds his character was facing. However, for being the face that the Klan members see, it was Adam Driver (as Flip) who was rewarded with an unexpected Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
Topher Grace played KKK Grand Wizard tongue-in-cheek. Jasper Pääkkönen (as Felix Kendrickson) led the other actors playing the local KKK minions who maintained the thick atmosphere of danger intact amidst the dark humor of the procedings. Also memorable among the supporting cast were Corey Hawkins as civil rights speaker Kwame Ture, Fred Weller as racist patrolman Andy Landers and Laura Harrier as student activist Patrice Dumas (who became Ron's love interest).
Also included here were scenes not integral to the story of Ron Stallworth, but were powerful statements against the racial atmosphere in the United States not only in the past but also in the present. Alec Baldwin appeared in the very first scene in a hateful white supremacist rant. Harry Belafonte appeared as activist Jerome Turner telling about the lynching of African-American teenager Jesse Washington in Waco, Texas way back 1916.
For a final punch, Lee gave us shocking news reel footage which showed anarchy on the streets during the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. President Trump's statement about the heinous event would also be heard. This ending is vastly more disturbing and horrific than everything else we have seen because it shows the real-life state of racism in the USA even in this supposed age of integration. 9/10.
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