Klan of the Black Man

According to that unimpeachable source of information known as Wikipedia, Spike Lee’s latest film (I don’t care what he calls it; it’s not a “joint” cus’ you can’t smoke and get high on it), ‘BlackKklansman,’ is a biographical dramedy based on the hard-to-believe but real life story of Ron Stallworth, a funky-groovy-cool cat of a detective in the Colorado Springs police department who somehow successfully infiltrated the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in the late 70’s.

 

So how did an Afro-haired dark-skinned brotha’ manage to ingratiate himself with a vile and despicable white supremacist brotherhood like the KKK (by which I don't mean Kim, Khloe and Kourtney)?  Not knowing quite what to expect, I admit I was half expecting some silly Wayans brothers shenanigans as seen in the movie ‘White Chicks,’ but thankfully that wasn’t the case at all. Stallworth (well played by John David Washington, whose father happens to be “The Equalizer” himself) merely misrepresented himself as an appropriately racist angry white male over the phone who’s interested in furthering the KKK's not-so-noble causes, and sold it so convincingly that he even fooled none other than David Duke (Topher Grace from ‘That ‘70’s Show’).  Any face-to-face was handled by his partner-in-deception, a fellow detective named Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), whose being Jewish only made screwing with the KKK that much more fun.

 

Timely, provocative and packed with wry humor, ‘BlackKklansman’ is as surely a byproduct of our troubled times as its protagonist was in his, a time when racial tensions are on the rise due to a spate of police shootings nation-wide which made Rodney King look like he got off easy and gave rise to the “Black Lives Matter” movement.  As such, ‘BlackKklansman’ may be Spike Lee’s most resonant and politically relevant movie since 1992's ‘Malcolm X,’ which interestingly and coincidentally enough featured John David Washington's famous dad in the title role.

Grade: A