Saturday, September 1, 2018

Film Review - BlackKklansman (2018)

BlackKklansman is based off a true story and is the newest joint by Spike Lee and takes place in 1972 where a black undercover detective (John David Washington son of Denzel) the first black man to be recruited to the Colorado Springs Police Force decides to investigate the local chapter of the KKK (Klu Klux Klan) and recurits one of his fellow detectives a white man played by Adam Driver to act in his place and it gets very hairy.

BlackKklansman walks a very tight high wire act between being serious and comedic and Spike manages for the most part to walk very well as part of me thought before seeing this movie “This story sounds utterly bizarre” and yet it really happened and it was told very well, John Washington is very much his father’s son as he sounds so much like him and has a lot of his fathers natural charm and charisma, Adam Driver once again shows what a great actor he is as he knocks it out of the park and walks a very fine line of having to be someone else and not give his real identity away while Corey Hawkins does a great speech scene that reminded me of Denzel in Malcolm X.

But in the end and I won’t say too much but you will know it when it happens I found that the very delicate tight rope that had been managed so well came undone and the reason I feel this way is because it feels like its come out of a movie of this story that is a lot more serious in its tone and the way it inserts itself editorially is as a hard cut and I couldn’t help but think that a dissolve would’ve been much better that way you could still enjoy the high wire act and get the impact of that ending whereas here it feels like it comes out of nowhere and for me personally I found myself marking the film down a little bit because of it.

And so that was BlackKklansman a film that Spike Lee pulls off very well for the most part save for the ending and because of that I have very mixed feelings on the film overall, 2 and a half out of 5.

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