BlacKkKlansman

Spike Lee has now been directing films for thirty years, and in all that time he's almost always been done in by self-indulgence. The only two great films he's made are Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X, mostly because he avoided his own worst instincts and stuck to the story (although I think that Do the Right Thing went on too long with Mookie demanding his wages). With BlacKkKlansman, despite the affectation of the title and a coda that some could see as going over the top, is right up there with those two films, and could be Lee's first film ever to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

Based on a true story, BlacKkKlansman tells the tale of Ron Stallworth, who was the first black on the Colorado Springs, Colorado police force (I've never been there and don't know too much about the place, but it has a strong evangelical population and strikes me as the kind of town that wouldn't welcome such a development in the 1970s). He starts as a file clerk, but because of his race he gets an undercover assignment to monitor a speech by the visiting Kwame Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael), a founder of The Black Panthers. Stallworth hears much to admire in his speech, but also believes in his duty as a policeman, and thus bristles when the woman he meets and becomes attracted to refers to all cops as pigs.

Seeing an advertisement (!) for recruits to the Ku Klux Klan, Stallworth calls them up and asks to meet. Of course, he can't really do that, so another undercover cop (Adam Driver) plays the physical Stallworth. Despite being suspected by one of the members, Driver actually goes far enough to get a membership card and get the goods on them for weapons possession. Stallworth manages to speak on on the phone to the "Grand Wizard," David Duke (still a finger in the eye to America) and befriends him. Duke says he can tell when he's speaking to a black or white person.

BlacKkKlansman is all over the place, but somehow fits together like a crazy jigsaw puzzle. It's funny, it's angering, it's righteous (and not self-righteous), and it's a good old-fashioned good guys vs. bad guys crime drama. It also may be the first film to depict the Klan as it actually is. When I was in high school we learned about them, and at that time (and I doubt this has changed much) the consistent thing about white supremacists is that they are not very well educated, and sometimes downright stupid. What may seem ludicrously over the top, such as the whole group of them watching and cheering on D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation is probably true. One member and his wife share pillow talk about getting a chance to "kill n*ggers."

Lee, who made a terrific crime drama in The Inside Man, brings those chops here. We get some gripping scenes, such as when the suspicious Klan member wants to give Driver a lie-detector test. Driver is Jewish, so the man also wants to see if he's circumcised. Of course, as in any undercover police movie, Driver gets made by a man he put in jail, and there is a satisfying but also discouraging ending. This is where Lee shows news footage of the rally of white power lunatics in Charlottesville last year, with Trump saying that some of those who marched were "fine people" and giving tribute to Heather Heyer, who died that day. It may be the first narrative film to actually take a shot at Trump, and it's not a surprise that it would be Lee to do it. Clearly he wants to show that despite small victories against the Klan, they haven't gone away.

Above all, this is an entertaining picture. It has a great cast. Driver should be nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Stallworth is played by John David Washington, son of Denzel, who should easily be able to step outside his father's shadow. Steve Buscemi is in a small role as Driver's partner, and the great Harry Belafonte makes an appearance at the end of the film as he tells the story of a friend of his who was brutally tortured for supposedly raping a white woman. Belafonte's speech is juxtaposed with a gathering of the Klan. The help are black, and one waiter says, "If I knew this was a Klan meeting, I wouldn't have taken this motherfucking gig." Topher Grace makes for a clueless Duke (apparently Duke fears that the film makes him look like an idiot. That's not difficult).

A few other notes: Terence Blanchard's score is terrific. There aren't a lot of songs from the period in the film, though one of them is "Lucky Man." A Spike Lee film is the last place I'd expect to hear Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.