See It at the Movies

BLACKKKLANSMAN

By Joyce & Don Fowler
Posted 8/15/18

BLACKKKLANSMAN * * * (Spike Lee racial drama) There is no doubt that director Spike Lee can raise emotions with his controversial take on race in America. Lee has taken Ron Stallworth's story about being the first African American on the Colorado Springs

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See It at the Movies

BLACKKKLANSMAN

Posted

BLACKKKLANSMAN

* * *

(Spike Lee racial drama)

There is no doubt that director Spike Lee can raise emotions with his controversial take on race in America. Lee has taken Ron Stallworth's story about being the first African American on the Colorado Springs Police Force and turned it into an exciting, sometimes funny, thought-provoking film. The film pulls no punches, showing both black and white points of view and prejudices and using every racial epithet in the book.

Stallworth (John David Washington) goes undercover, posing as a white extremist over the phone and working his way into the local KKK chapter. He sends his colleague, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) deep into the "organization" to represent him, and the results make for a most interesting story.

"BlacKKKlansman" is much more than an interesting, tension-packed tale because Lee has many issues to deal with. He opens his movie with a scene from "Gone With the Wind,” with thousands of soldiers lying dead and wounded on the ground, and closes with last year's Charlottesville riots. And that's not all. David Duke takes a real hit, as does Donald Trump, with two searing references. Harry Belafonte has a scene in the movie that will give you goosebumps.

The movie is only an hour and a half long, but Lee packs it with tense, controversial, disturbing scenes, showing the dangerous white supremacists in their worst light and relating the events of the Vietnam era with history repeating itself today. It is at times a tough movie to watch, but one that should be seen.

Rated R, with profanity, violence and many racial epithets.

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