My Review of 'BlacKKKlansman'

When I first heard of the concept of the Blackkklansman I thought it was a joke. After all, this is a story about a black man infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan for a police investigation. The concept reminded me of a Dave Chappelle skit he did on the Dave Chappelle show with a blind black man acting as the leader of the Ku Klux Klan. It was a funny concept but I never imagined something similar to this actually happening in real life.

The movie starts off explaining the racist climate that America was in during the 1970s. A doe-eyed new recruit named Ron Stallworth becomes the first black officer for his precinct. He obviously goes through prejudice and injustices throughout his career but he wants to make a difference from within the system. His naive point of view is put into question when some crazy hurdles come his way.

Ron is helped by a fellow officer named Flip who happens to be Jewish. Flip is apprehensive when asked about his Jewish heritage. He's never practiced his religion or associated himself with his origins and just passed as a regular white guy for all his life until their investigation with the Ku Klux Klan, or as they're referred to in this movie the "organization." Both Ron and Flip are obviously conflicted within themselves when they get deeper and deeper into the "organization," but they know that the work is important and bigger than themselves so they keep going.

There are tons of intense moments in this movie where you feel like a bomb is going to go off and at times this can literally happen in the movie. I watched this movie with my brother and he thought it wasn't a comedy as they claimed it to be. I have to argue that because of the sheer absurdity of all of the situations that the main characters are placed into I could understand why this movie can be categorized as a comedy. Sometimes the lines between comedy and drama are often blurred though.

This is definitely a social commentary on how a lot of people view the state of America today and how their politics work. As I'm not American I can't say if the political system works the way that they say it does so I took it for what it's worth. I can see the logic in how everything works so I understood where they were going.

I think Spike Lee did a masterful job having empathy for all of the characters in the movie. He gives them all life and and I understood everyone's motivations. Each of the characters felt real. He even develops our understanding of why people would join a white supremacist group like the "organization." He's been making great movies for a long time and with each movie he keeps getting better. He even talks about how on the opposite spectrum some of the black organization groups can be blinded by their anger.

This movie is really a lesson to tell us all to calm down and take our time to look within and see what's right, what's wrong, and fix ourselves before things escalate. The movie even further goes on to compare the climate of the past and the climate of today and how things really haven't changed much.

After watching this movie I really wished that it did better in the box office and more people watched it. I realize that these are really heavy messages and that the movie can be pretty intense as well. Despite this I believe everyone can enjoy this movie and thought it was really well done. I would give this movie a 9 out of 10. You have to go see this movie. It's not a movie you'd want to watch over and over again but you'll want to recommend this movie to your friends after watching it.