Blackkklansman (2018) ****

Director Spike Lee has never been known for subtlety, and he isn't about to start being subtle now, in his story of Ron Stalworth, the real-life black cop who infiltrated the KKK. Based on Stalworth's book, “Black Klansman,” Lee's film is as bold and in-your-face as any of his work, and, in case you wondered, Lee does change the story quite a bit for dramatic effect.

In real life, Stalworth (played by John David Washington), the first black officer on the Colorado Springs police force, responded to a recruiting ad for the local Ku Klux Klan chapter. Using his “whitest” voice, he spouted racist rhetoric about blacks and Jews, and ingratiated himself with the chapter president. He then got a white officer to pose as Ron Stalworth to meet and join the group. The two gathered intelligence on the Klan, including the involvement of several active military personnel. They also became quite friendly with National Grand Wizard David Duke, much to his eventual embarrassment.

It's a great story, and Spike Lee gussies it up with some dramatic flourishes, including a bomb plot, and making Stalworth's partner (Adam Driver) Jewish. Like I said, Lee isn't known for his subtlety. Fortunately, the stellar cast is good enough to make up for most of the film's excesses. Washington (son of Denzel) and Driver are funny and convincing. Laura Harrier, who plays Stalworth's love interest, is cute as a button, and Topher Grace plays a spot-on David Duke. The best performance, however, may come from Jasper Paakkonen, who is absolutely chilling as a Klansman who is suspicious of Stalworth, adding some menace to the operation.

It's always hard for me to tell if Spike Lee understands that race relations are a two-way street, if he is just suspicious of whites and sympathetic to blacks, or a little of both. The film includes a long speech by Kwame Ture, who warns his young, black audience that a race war is coming, mirroring the race-war talk of the Klan members. Ture encourages violence against “racist, white cops,” and the film includes examples of abusive policemen who make it easy to sympathize with that stance. You get the feeling, though, that Ture wouldn't mind much if his audience just used “cops” as shorthand, or maybe even “whites.” Later, Harry Belafonte appears as activist Jerome Turner, describing a horrific lynching to a group of black students, and his talk ends with chants of “Black Power” intercut with scenes of Klansmen chanting “White Power.” Is Lee suggesting that black radicals and white radicals have some things in common? It doesn't seem characteristic of Lee, but seeing these scenes juxtaposed makes me wonder.

Then again, Lee finishes up the movie with footage of the 2017 Charlottesville, VA riots, including the deadly car attack, making it pretty clear where his sympathies lie. For me, the overt political message turns this from a 5-star film to a 4-star one. The music, costumes, script, and performances are stellar, but the sermonizing undermines the outstanding source material. Given a great story like Ron Stalworth's, Lee could have made a shorter, better, more powerful movie, and the racial message would have spoken for itself.

4 stars out of 5