Spike Lee’s forthright and outraged crime drama tells the true story of Ron Stallworth (played in the film by John David Washington), a cop in Colorado Springs who, thanks to phone conversations and correspondence, managed to infiltrate the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in 1972. Stallworth has phone conversations with David Duke (Topher Grace), a man who served in the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1989 to 1992, despite being a KKK Grand Wizard. When Stallworth requires an in-person avatar to appear at Klan meetings, he enlists his white co-worker, the Jewish Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver). Lee, as is his idiom, doesn’t shy away from hard conversations about racism in America and the stubborn persistence of mealy-mouthed, pathetic, ignorant, idiotic hate groups like the KKK. Lee even allows his characters to have conversations about the role of the police and how being a Black cop might be antithetical to civil rights causes.
Lee also points out how D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film “The Birth of a Nation” has long been used as a rallying cry for white supremacists, even a century after its release. Lee ends the film with up-to-the-minute footage of recent racial attacks and speeches by Donald Trump. “BlacKkKlansman” is a historical film, but is sadly incredibly timely.
“BlacKkKlansman” won Best Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards, and is leaving Netflix on January 5.