BlacKkKlansman review: A comedic punch in the gut

BlacKkKlansman manages to be both funny and real with neither aspect being compromised. Though it is set in the 70’s, the real aspects of the film are incredibly relevant in today’s America.

Walking into BlacKkKlansman I wasn’t sure what to expect. The previews revealed the film would lean into the comedic aspect of the situation, but I wasn’t sure how real it would get. It’s a true story about a black man becoming a member of the Klan. Ron Stallworth would have full, hate-filled, conversations with David Duke without Duke ever realizing he was talking to a black man. The comedy writes itself, but the question was what would the balance be.

I personally didn’t want the film to be too much of a comedy. If there was too much of an effort to make fun of the bigots in the film, it wouldn’t have been able to deliver its message. At the same time, if they didn’t have enough funny moments it would come off as preachy and would make certain audiences uncomfortable. The latter still happened based on tweets mentioning people walking out of theaters, but not enough to keep the film from having a 77% fresh rating from audiences.

BlacKkKlansman managed to find an appropriate balance of the two, while also depicting members of the Klan in a way that didn’t paint them with one broad brush.

The Klan portrayal

As mentioned, the way that the Klan was to be portrayed was key to the film. The story in itself is going to be mocking the Klan, but the members couldn’t all be cartoons and they couldn’t all be violent bigots either. We needed a realistic portrayal of all of the types of individuals involved and BlacKkKlansman delivered. Of course, you have your ignorant racists who were just born into it and never learned any better (Paul Walter Hauser’s Ivanhoe). Of course, you also have your violent bigot who wants nothing more than to incite and carry out acts of violence (Jasper Paakkonen’s Felix Kendrickson). We’ve seen these characters on-screen heavily. They don’t get the message across because they wear their bigotry on their sleeves. What America needed to see on-screen was the bigot hiding in plain sight and that’s where David Duke and Walter Breachway come in.

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David Duke (Topher Grace) was the Grand Wizard of the Klan and gave himself the title of National Director to make the Klan, I’m sorry, the “organization” more mainstream. He had his eyes on political office and carried himself as a politician would. He was professional, clean-cut and expressed his views matter-of-factly and not in the way of an angry caricature.

Walter Breachway (Ryan Eggold) was this same brand of bigot. He was the leader of the Colorado Springs chapter and it was clear that he was keeping the more radical members in line to some degree. These characters are important because they are the most dangerous, and most prevalent among us.

The cops

The film also painted different shades of police as well and addressed the issue of the thin blue line that allows bad cops to remain within the force. It shows the good, the bad, and the indifferent within the force when it came to the treatment of blacks. The bad being represented the most in Master Patrolman Andy Landers (Fredrick Weller). He is the stereotypical racist cop while most of the others are guilty because they know how he is and don’t do anything about it. This is an issue that still exists in the police force. A few bad officers make the rest look bad but the other officers do their part to protect that officer because of this sense of brotherhood.

The film did add an unexpected angle with Adam Driver’s character Flip Zimmerman and the idea of “passing” as white. This is an issue within all minority groups and was something I didn’t expect to see handled the way it was in the film. It’s a subject that will be explored further in Rebecca Hall’s directorial debut Passing, which just cast Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson as its leads. I won’t touch on it too much but it was a pleasant surprise to see the subject come up in the movie.

John David Washington

During the movie it was hard not to see Denzel in his son. His voice and even the way he walks in a few scenes are completely his father but it is clear than John David is poised for a blowup of his own. He has a strong presence throughout and his quiet confidence in this role was powerful. His character, Ron Stallworth, was the first black police officer hired into the Colorado Springs police force and dealt with the racial tensions that came along with it. He has a few great moments where he calmly handles himself in the face of bigotry and a few others where he can’t hide his true feelings.

At the other end of the spectrum he also got close to the black activists in the city, most notably Laura Harrier’s Patrice Dumas. Among the black activists we meet, there are a few that are talking about a race war, but the majority are focused on peaceful organization and black liberation. He’s forced to consider his role in the oppression of the black people in the city as a member of the police force in a few of these interactions. Ron also has to deal with some difference in opinion in the movie but these scenes didn’t focus on who was right and who was wrong but showed two sides of the discussion. Again, something that couldn’t have been handled better.

Overall

BlacKkKlansman was definitely designed to send a message about today’s America. Racism never went away, it just found a way to hide in plain sight. The film highlights the blueprint behind this as well as the mentality that helped it become effective and allowed someone like Trump to find his way to the White House. It does this while still making you laugh but then the ending happens.

During the final few minutes of the film you could hear a pin drop in the theater as Spike decided make things very real by transitioning to the modern-day and highlighting the obvious bigotry that still exists. He doesn’t allow you to walk out of the theater thinking that this was just a moment from the 70’s that you could disconnect yourself from and leaves you with a sobering gut punch of reality. This was brilliantly delivered and, by most of the accounts I read, left audiences emotional when leaving the theater.

However, these scenes also appear to be why there is a 20% gap between the critic reviews and the reviews of the general audience. Sifting through one star reviews on Rotten Tomatoes confirms this and shows exactly why it was necessary to add these images and end the film on that note. Released on the anniversary weekend of her passing, the film is dedicated to Heather Heyer. The young lady who lost her life when a neo-nazi drove his car through a group of counter-protesters at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA last year.

If you haven’t already gone out to see BlacKkKlansman, I highly recommend it. I also recommend you take a friend and start a conversation.

PS. Stay through the credits to hear an unreleased Prince song.