BlacKkKlansman.

Spike Lee's new "joint," BlacKkKlansman is the tale of the first African-American to join the Colorado Springs police force.  He is recruited as such, and quickly manages to secure a position as an undercover detective who is sent to investigate the activities of the local group of Black Panthers.  This very quickly leads him also into investigating and infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan at the same time.

The first and most obvious question I went into the movie with is (and I suspect everyone did), "How is this black guy going to go undercover into the KKK?" I'll admit, for a brief and awesome moment at the beginning, I suspected we were about to see Spike Lee make a movie with whiteface.  For those of you who aren't familiar with Spike Lee's work, he is pretty widely known for making films that are hard hitting about the treatment of black people and other minorities in America, as well as having very pointed shots and cinematography.  When I sit down to watch a Spike Lee movie, I expect to be made to feel bad about being white at one point.  For those of you who aren't familiar, in the old and exceptionally racist days of theater and film, instead of using a black actor they would simply paint a white actor's face black, and hence created the most offensive way to produce entertainment: blackface.  Therefore I wondered if he might go full bore and have his protagonist in whiteface make-up.

Those hopes were quickly dashed, and our protagonist Ron Stallworth (played by John David Washington) simply acted as the voice of this Klan member while supporting actor Adam Driver (known for playing Kylo Ren in the new Star Wars saga) played the Jewish detective and face of the Klan member.  It was a reasonable set-up, and was being executed well at first.  Spike Lee's photography and cinematography was compelling and on-point.  Whenever I see the shots he uses I make sure to take note of how Spike wants me to feel about what's happening and why.  He is a master of creating intense scenes which are designed to instill specific emotions from his audiences.

It's worth mentioning at this point that I felt a disruption in the flow of the movie.  It was entertaining, and sometimes funny.  But the humor would sometimes come out of the blue, and it seem to disrupt the intensity of previous scenes.  Sometimes I felt like it made it hard for me to take the movie seriously, and it became hard to discern whether I was watching an action, comedy or drama!

 But all of that didn't matter in the end, because for me, Spike Lee went too far. 

The whole point of satire is to take a situation, whether it be social, political, or religious; some event that is occurring in the world, and point it out for its faults.  Satire is tongue-in-cheek commentary on real life events and is used to make a point without going right out and saying what you mean.  So when Spike decided to use the last 10-15 minutes to shows present-day clips of rallies, protests, riots, the KKK and Trump to make sure his point was driven home, he RUINED THIS MOVIE.  Sure, the actually story part of the film might have been o.k., but I won't really be able to tell you because he ruined this being a satire and instead made a propaganda film.  I don't watch movies to get involved in what's going on in the world; unless I'm watching documentaries.  but then I'm signed on for reality being presented through a lens.  But Spike Lee put two hours of narrative in front of propaganda and now it is neither documentary, satire, nor narrative.  It is just Spike Lee jacking America with his anger.  He had started a beautifully presented satire and then just crapped all over it.  I do not recommend this as a film.  If you like anti-Trump/America is burning propaganda though...go see it.  I review films though.  I give it one star for the actors and for being somewhat entertaining, but it was a total letdown.

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