I'd love to thank the Adelaide Film Festival Film Club for the free advance screening for this review.
Blackkklansman comes to us from Director Spike Lee & Producer Jordan Peele and tells the true story of Ron Stallworth, the first african-american police officer in Colorado Springs infiltrating the Klu Klux Klan.
To achieve this he enlists the help of a fellow officer played by Adam Driver to pose as him in person while Ron handled the phone calls and planning.
This film is biographical in nature but has some fantastic storytelling, looking at the trailers, it looked like a really fun time with some funny humour about the time period and racism.
I'm glad to report this isn't just some comedy movie, here we have a rare film that manages to be funny and outlandish at times but at the same time drives home a serious emotional message, Spike Lee should absolutely be commended for this because it was executed flawlessly.
John David Washington gives an interesting quirky performance here and nails it perfectly, Adam Driver turned out to be much more involved in the story than I had anticipated and has some really great moments.
I have never had a cinema experience quite like this, for instance at the tail end of the film, in the space of 10 minutes the entire audience in my screening went from laughing and some perfectly executed comedic dialogue to utter still silence in absolute awe, frozen & horrified by what was appearing on screen, this silence went on for a few moment even after the fade to black and an applause started up.
This film had me thinking about what I had seen for a long, long time afterward and I am still thinking about it almost every second.
Blackkklansman really shows the Klan for what they really are, and highlights the good work of an amazing african-american police officer. The supporting cast does a great job here, Topher Grace as David Duke was an insanely good performance and I can imagine how hard it would be to embody that particular character and Laura Harrier plays off of Washington beautifully.
In addition there is a great cameo at the beginning of this film, be on the look out!
Blackkklansman is easily in my top 10 for 2018 so far and I urge you all to go see it in cinemas, small warning though, there are some quite confronting images in this film, they are hard to watch but I think that it should be watched as that is the intention here.
Blackkklansman is out in cinemas August 17th.
