Film Review: BlacKkKlansman

SPIKE LEE BRINGS HUMOUR AND A HARD-HITTING MESSAGE TO BIZARRE TRUE STORY ABOUT THE KKK

While Denzel Washington stars in the anti-hero vigilante flick The Equalizer 2 this month, it's his son, John David Washington, who stars in this year's most important film about trying to seek justice against truly evil people.

Washington plays Ron Stallworth, a rookie cop granted a provisional position on the Colorado police force after a hideously patronising interview, which shows not all of the racism Stallworth will face will come from the KKK. Ambitious and inspired by the Black Panthers' revolutionary call to arms, Stallworth impulsively answers a recruitment ad for the KKK to eek out information.

However, he's shocked when his phone call sees him connected to the head of the Klan, David Duke himself (played with smarmy brilliance by Topher Grace). Stallworth decides to not only engage Duke in a series of incriminating conversations, but to infiltrate the Klan. Obviously, he can't do this in person, so his colleague Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver, superb) plays him in real life.

It sounds utterly ridiculous, and is, especially as Stallworth and Zimmerman sound nothing alike. But the outrageousness adds to the satisfying hilarity of seeing a black man fool the head of the Ku Klux Klan with generic, MAGA-style racist rhetoric (as if someone who calls himself 'The Grand Wizard' isnt already a fool). Lee styles Stallworth as a blaxploitation hero, complete with perfectly coiffed Afro, to add to the stylised fun.

But BlacKkKlansman is also hard-hitting, examining different elements that contribute to America's racism, including toxic masculinity, religious xenophobia and a sense of entitlement to wealth.

While often funny and tense, the film is also tender and emotionally powerful. In one moving scene, Lee pans across the faces of black people listening to Civil Rights leaders, their desperate need for hope etched across their faces.

Lee ends with a montage of recent white supremacist marches in America, including the horrific violence in Charlottesville in 2017, where dozens of anti-racism protesters were injured and Heather Heyer was killed.

BlacKkKlansman unites past and present in an uncomfortable truth: America was founded on racism, which isn't just persisting, but reigniting. Who are the ordinary people who are going to take a stand?