Director: Spike Lee
Year Released: 2018
Rating: 2.0
The only African-American police officer in Colorado Springs, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), calls up the Ku Klux Klan (!) and tries to become a member, with fellow cop Flip (Adam Driver) acting as his in-person contact (Flip is of Jewish descent) - this madness leads to Ron becoming phone buddies with none other than Grand Wizard David Duke (Topher Grace). This actually happened, more or less, but Lee, who's never been one for subtlety, goes well, well over-the-top: there are racist cops, white people using racial slurs in every single sentence, Harry Belafonte giving a sad lecture while the Klansmen 'cleanse' themselves, a single burning cross and, at the conclusion, a C4 explosive that goes off (as expected, a black man gets beaten for this even though he didn't plant it). The provocateur in Lee, however, is offset by his more court jester-like traits, and it never manages to be as 'jarring' as he intended it to be: most of it is too cartoonish to be eviscerating. He is right about how our current Emperor is only making race-relations worse in America, although that's never really been up for debate.
