Judas and the Black Messiah: A Review and Commentary

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A flawed but fantastic film that vibrates with a formidable vitality that also features two Oscar-worthy performances by Daniel Kaluuya and LaKieth Stanfield.

Judas and the Black Messiah, which opened in theatres and on the streaming service HBO Max on February 12th, recounts the true story of the betrayal of Fred Hampton, the charismatic chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers, by Bill O’Neal, an FBI informant.

The flawed but fantastic film, written and directed by Shaka King, features a fascinating story and scintillating performances from Daniel Kaluuya as Hampton and LaKeith Stanfield as O’Neal, which makes it among the very best movies of this thus far cinematically calamitous year.

I have never been much impressed by Daniel Kaluuya as an actor. I thought Get Out was ridiculously overrated and thought his performance in it was too. But as Fred Hampton, Kaluuya utterly disappears into the role and creates as charismatic and compelling a character as has graced screens all year. Kaluuya’s Hampton vibrates with a natural magnetism and intensity that is glorious to behold.

As great as Kaluuya is, and he is great, LaKieth Stanfield actually has the harder job and does equally outstanding work. O’Neal is a tortured and tormented soul, and Stanfield masterfully shows us all his shades. Stanfield’s subtle, complex and detailed work is most definitely Oscar-worthy, and is a testament to his impressive skill and craftsmanship.

Other performances don’t fare quite as well as Kaluuhya and Stanfield though. Jesse Plemons, an excellent actor, does the best he can with a terribly under written role as an FBI agent, and Martin Sheen, also an excellent actor, is so dreadful as J. Edgar Hoover it is like he’s acting in a different, and much worse, movie.

The biggest issue with the film is that its secondary narratives, one which involves Hoover and the other involves Hampton’s girlfriend Deborah Johnson, lack a dramatic cohesion and power, and they distract from the main story and scuttle much needed momentum. The Hoover angle is distractingly cartoonish and the love story between Hampton and Johnson is uncomfortably lifeless, as Dominique Fishback is, to put it mildly, underwhelming in the role of Johnson.

Other issues with the film are that Shaka King’s direction was not quite as deft as I would have preferred. The script and the editing also could have been a bit tighter, but with that said, the film definitely has an undeniable energy to it and pulsates with a power that is impressive.

One final issue was the sound mixing. I watched the movie on HBO Max and the sound mix was utterly abysmal. Much of the dialogue, Daniel Kaluuya’s most of all, got lost under the music in the mix. This could be a function of HBO Max, which unfortunately is a horrible technical streaming service, or it could be I am going deaf, or it could be the sound mixing was atrocious…who knows…but it was irritating.

Predictably, most critics are using the film to connect the more recent Black Lives Matter movement with the revolutionary Black Panther movement of the 1960’s spotlighted in the film.

This is an intellectually egregious and mind-numbingly vacuous interpretation of the movie and its narrative.

The film isn’t about our current manufactured myopia regarding race, it’s about power and the great lengths those with it will go to subjugate those without it and maintain the status quo.

Infamous FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, embarrassingly portrayed in the movie by Martin Sheen in an obscenely amateurish prosthetic nose, deemed the Black Panthers “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country” for among other reasons because their free breakfast program for kids wasn’t just for black kids but for all kids.

In response Hoover unleashed COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) and its dirty tactics on the Black Panthers just as he had done previously to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and other leftists.

As highlighted in the film, the Black Panthers/Hampton were seen as direct threats to the power structure of the U.S. because they worked to bring all poor and working class people together, be they black, Native American, Latino and even Confederate flag-waving whites, against a common enemy, the ruling class, which subjugated and abused them.

Hampton, MLK and Malcolm X weren’t targeted by COINTELPRO’s massive surveillance and infiltration operation and ultimately assassinated under extremely suspicious circumstances because they were standing up just for black people, but because they were working to bring all peoples together to fight against the corrupt and criminal political power exploiting poor and working class in America and across the globe.

In comparison to the towering revolutionaries of Hampton, King and Malcolm X, Black Lives Matter are shameless courtesans to the establishment.

The FBI obviously don’t see BLM as a threat, hell it is such a collection of useful idiots the feds probably started it in the first place. The power structure’s greatest fear is that poor and working class black and white people will stop directing their anger at each other and start directing it at Washington, Silicon Valley and Wall Street. BLM is a critical tool to thwart that impulse and keep the proletariat separated by race…conveniently divided and conquered.

This is how something as innocuous as “All Lives Matter” is transformed into a racial slur instead of a rousing rallying cry. BLM gives away its establishment protection game by so aggressively making enemies out of potential allies, proving they’d rather separate people than bring them together for a clear common cause – stopping police brutality.

There are other signs that BLM is the establishment’s controlled opposition.

For example, when a protest by QAnon clowns at the capitol building turned riot it was immediately labeled an “insurrection” and false stories about it were propagated throughout the mainstream media and the feds hunted down the perpetrators, but these same feds and media supported the BLM “mostly peaceful protests” that attacked police stations and government buildings and took over portions of major cities like Portland and Seattle and turned other cities into looted, chaotic, burning madhouses for months.

Another example is highlighted in the film when Hampton belittles the idea of a school name change as some kind of substantial victory. BLM specializes in this sort of self-righteous symbolism, empty sloganeering (Defund the Police!) and toothless grandstanding that intentionally doesn’t address the actual conditions under which poor people suffer. It is all style over substance, as BLM would rather bring down statues than hunger, homelessness or homicide rates.

What makes Judas and the Black Messiah so poignantly tragic is that it shows that the FBI, which the left now adores, have always been the frontline workers for American fascism and their victory over genuine dissent has been spectacular.

This is why we now have vapid, race-hustling racial grievance grifters like Al Sharpton instead of intellectual giants like Malcolm X and MLK. And why we got the “hope and change” charlatanry of Barack Obama, a maintenance man for the status quo who dutifully bails out Wall Street while Main Street crumbles, instead of the revolutionary Fred Hampton. And why we are fed the lap dog of Black Lives Matter play-acting at defiance while being whole-heartedly embraced by the corporate and political power structure, instead of the bulldog of the Black Panthers putting genuine fear into the establishment.

The Black Lives Matter contingent think they’re Fred Hampton, but they’re frauds, phonies, shills and sellouts, just like Bill O’Neal. And that’s why I recommend Judas and the Black Messiah…not just for the film’s cinematic dynamism or the standout performances of Kaluuya and Stanfield but because it rightfully exposes those bourgeois BLM bullshitters.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

One Night in Miami: Review and Commentary

My Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A flawed film but worth seeing because it boasts strong performances, most notably from Kingsley Ben-Adir.

One Night in Miami, which is streaming on Amazon, is generating critical adoration for its powerful performances and for its supposedly timely social commentary on race and racism in America.

The movie, written by Kemp Powers and directed by Regina King, tells the story of a fictionalized meeting between Malcolm X, Cassius Clay, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown in a Miami hotel room in 1964 immediately following Clay’s victory over Sonny Liston to become Heavyweight Champion of the World.

The movie is adapted from the play of the same name and features a series of long conversations and monologues talking about “the struggle” for civil rights and about how “black people are dying in the streets…you must choose a side.”

Unsurprisingly, critics are calling it “timely” and that it “shines a light on present-day America” because of the Black Lives Matter protests last Summer.

These are culturally cheap, socially easy and intellectually shallow lessons to glean from One Night in Miami. The movie strikes me not as an opportunity to highlight how much racism allegedly still exists in America today, but instead as a testament to the staggering amount of progress made in the last 56 years.

The civil rights movement of the 20th century dramatized in One Night in Miami was one of the most extraordinarily successful endeavors in American history.

From 1964 to 2008, black people went from being second-class citizens protesting for voting rights to successfully voting for a black man for president. That black man, Barack Obama, won both of his presidential elections resoundingly.

The Civil Rights Act became law in 1964, and although it certainly didn’t happen overnight, over the course of the last 56 years anti-black discrimination has receded in America to the point where it is now deemed legally, morally and socially repugnant.

Case in point is an early scene in the movie where Jim Brown visits a family friend, an older white man played by Beau Bridges, in his home town in Georgia in 1964. After some lemonade and congratulatory conversation on the front porch, Brown offers to help the man move a piece of furniture inside the house. The man declines, telling Brown without a hint of shame that they “don’t let niggers” into their home.

That scene is so shocking and jarring because it is inconceivable in modern day America.

Cassius Clay, who shortly after the events dramatized in the movie becomes Muhammad Ali, is a perfect example of the massive change in American perspective from 1964 onward.

In 1964, Clay/Ali was reviled by most Americans for being a loud mouth, malcontent and Muslim. By 1974 he was celebrated as an iconic hero for his courageous victory over George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle. By 1996 he was a living legend and avatar for the very best of America as he carried the torch for the U.S. at the summer Olympics in Atlanta.

Objectively, by nearly every measure, discrimination has been so reduced as to be nearly non-existent. Subjectively though, the ghosts of oppression still haunt black minds and guilt still infects white minds. This transforms the fight against racism from an external struggle against discrimination to an internal one against perceived prejudice (which still exists among all races) and that is a much more complex, complicated and confounding battle to wage.

The chains of slavery are long gone, as are the legal discriminations of the Jim Crow era…and yet the need to project the subjective issue of prejudice into a struggle against the phantom of an external “systemic racism” and “white supremacy” in order to identify as both a noble victim and brave resistor is extremely powerful and intoxicating.

There is a certain sense of cos-playing in the current “anti-racist” movement. It is an existential yearning for purpose and meaning by trying to emulate the greats of the civil rights movement who succeeded in changing the country.

Every woke poseur, be they white or black, thinks they’re John Brown, Malcolm X and Huey P. Newton all rolled into one. They aren’t, they’re puffed up toddlers ranting and railing against the imaginary monsters hiding under their bed.

The subjective, self-serving yet self-defeating woke hyper-racialization of recent years has turned demands for equal treatment into the cries for special treatment, and has transformed MLK’s dream of judging people by the content of their character into racism, and judging people by the color of their skin into enlightenment.

This immoral madness puts us on a downward trajectory that only leads to calamity in the form of a catastrophic conflagration.

As for One Night in Miami, I recommend it as it is a flawed but captivating film that boasts two Oscar level performances from Kingsley Ben-Adir as Malcolm X and Leslie Odom Jr. as Sam Cooke.

Near the end of the movie there’s a scene where Sam Cooke sings his civil rights anthem, “A Change is Gonna Come” on the Tonight Show.

The song’s soulful chorus is, “it’s been a long, long time coming, but I know, a change gonna come”.

Thanks to men like Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown and Sam Cooke and countless courageous others, change has come… and One Night in Miami is an excellent opportunity to acknowledge it.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

MLK/FBI: A Review and Commentary

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Regurgitated, establishment friendly pablum that studiously avoids the bigger questions.

I’ve heard it said that Americans are the most propagandized people on the planet. I think that statement is quite accurate.

What makes the propaganda fed to Americans so insidious is that it’s so subtle that audiences, even the supposedly intellectual ones, are blissfully unaware of their indoctrination and conditioning.

A perfect example of this is MLK/FBI, the new documentary directed by Sam Pollard that premiered in theaters and video-on-demand on January 15th, that chronicles the FBI’s wiretapping and harassment of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.

A documentary dealing with intelligence community nefariousness and MLK, the greatest American strategist and tactician of the 20th century, has my attention.

Unfortunately, after watching MLK/FBI, I was left frustrated and infuriated because it was so obviously a docile and deferential piece of establishment friendly propaganda meant to distract and deceive viewers.

This movie is 104 minutes of flaccid history and impotent insights disguised as setting the record straight with revolutionary revelations. But there is no new information presented in the film and no new perspectives on the information already known.

The most interesting statement in the movie comes in the final ten minutes and is from MLK aide Andrew Young, who would go on to become a congressman, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. and the Mayor of Atlanta.

Young says in regards to James Earl Ray, the man convicted of the assassination of MLK, “I don’t think James Earl Ray had anything to do with that, Dr. King’s assassination, so I can’t really comment on that.”

This should be where the movie starts, not where it ends.

What makes the FBI’s harassment of MLK noteworthy is that they were gathering salacious information on his private life in an attempt to assassinate his character and thus derail his morally authoritative movement.

The FBI actively tried to get members of the press to publish stories of King’s infidelity but none took the bait, and so the FBI was left with lots of ammunition but no one willing to fire it.

It was when King expanded his civil rights work and in 1968 began the Poor People’s Campaign, which set out to bring poor people of all colors together to fight for economic justice and against American militarism, that the FBI ratcheted up its anti-King work, and this is where the infamous “rape participation” allegation first is documented by the FBI.

The claim, that King watched and laughed as another pastor raped a woman, is dubious and is not thoroughly fleshed out in the film, but it reveals the FBI understood the greater threat King now posed to the ruling order with the Poor People’s Campaign, and that it was willing to push the envelop to stop him.

Other civil right’s groups and leaders faced similar escalation when they dared to cross color lines and work on behalf of all people instead of just black people.

It wasn’t until Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam and evolved into a more racially inclusive yet no less revolutionary figure, that he got assassinated under shadowy circumstances.

The Black Panther’s free breakfast program, open to children of all races, was deemed by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to be “the greatest internal threat to the United States”. The Black Panthers were quickly infiltrated and some, including Fred Hampton, were assassinated.

And so it was with King’s Poor People’s Campaign, which triggered the FBI to “up its game”. Coincidentally, just a few weeks later he was assassinated in Memphis.

MLK/FBI is much too “respectable” to investigate or challenge Andrew Young’s claim regarding Ray’s innocence in the assassination of King, even though Ray himself claimed he was innocent, the King family believes he is innocent and a civil court ruled he was innocent. It’s this desperation for respectability at the expense of truth that makes the film establishment propaganda.

The other tell-tale sign it’s propaganda is that the film acts like FBI and intel community deviousness and depravity are some remote experience from a dark, distant past instead of a pressing issue of our time.

This allows liberals, especially ones like Bill Maher and John Oliver who pose as anti-establishmentarians, to continue to fawn over and fellate the “heroes” of the intel community under the guise that malicious misdeeds only occurred in the past.

The FBI’s invasive surveillance of King pales in comparison to what the intel community is capable of now. What the FBI did to King the intel community is now able to do to everyone since we all carry cell phones, mini eavesdropping devices that track our every movement, contact and conversation.

The film’s flaccidity also allows liberals to continue to giddily cheer the intel community’s crackdown on nationalists, militias and Julian Assange just as conservatives once cheered Hoover’s targeting King, civil rights and anti-war groups and communists.

It also surreptitiously endorses the Black Lives Matter and allows woke advocates to deceive themselves into thinking they’re morally equivalent to Dr. King.

BLM is no Poor People’s Campaign meant to threaten the establishment order. It’s a contrived and manipulative movement meant to uphold the status quo, not disrupt it, which is why its been swiftly embraced by Washington, the media and corporate America.

In conclusion, by being a documentary that talks an awful lot but never really has anything useful to say, MLK/FBI is a deceptive piece of establishment propaganda not worthy of your time.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Da 5 Bloods: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A terribly disappointing movie not worthy of anyone’s time.

Da 5 Bloods, directed by Spike Lee and written by Lee, Kevin Wilmott, Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo, tells the story of four black Vietnam veterans who return to that country as old men to search for the remains of their fallen comrade and to search for buried treasure. The ensemble cast includes Delroy Lindo, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Norm Lewis, Clarke Peters, Jonathan Majors and Chadwick Boseman.

It is difficult to remember now, but at one point in time, Spike Lee was arguably the most important filmmaker in the world, and certainly one of the most interesting. Blessed with a Scorsese-esque cinematic confidence and an artistic defiance reminiscent of Oliver Stone, Spike Lee was a director who demanded attention back in the late 80’s and early 90’s.

Lee’s Do the Right Thing had exploded onto screens in 1989 and revealed its director to be an innovative artist and daring provocateur.

Lee’s follow-ups to Do the Right Thing, Mo Better Blues (1990) and Jungle Fever (1991), weren’t as combustible as his noteworthy first hit, but they were solid films that showcased Lee’s deft craftsmanship.

All of these films led up to Lee’s crowning achievement, Malcolm X, which hit theatres in 1992. Malcolm X is an extraordinary cinematic achievement and is an absolute masterpiece that capped Lee’s remarkable artistic run from ‘89 to ‘92.

After that though, the wheels started to come off the Spike Lee wagon, as his movies became less and less relevant as his mastery of craft diminished rapidly. From this point on Lee became famous for being famous and was more identifiable as a Knicks fan than as a filmmaker.

For all intents and purposes, Spike Lee’s movie making had been on a very precipitous decline from 1994 until 2018…then BlackKklansman came out.

BlackKklansman was not a perfect movie, but it did crackle with a vibrancy and vitality which had been notably absent from Lee’s films in the preceding two and half decades following Malcolm X.

It was due to the return of Lee’s trademark cinematic dynamism in BlackKklansman that the sense that maybe, just maybe, we were going to be treated to a late stage artistic renaissance from Spike Lee, gathered momentum.

It was with all of this in mind that I watched Lee’s newest film, Da 5 Bloods when it premiered on Netflix last Friday.

To say I was disappointed would be a dramatic understatement. Whatever artistic momentum Lee garnered post BlackKklansman has quickly bogged itself down in a foolish quagmire north of Ho Chi Minh City in the dramatic mistake that is Da 5 Bloods.

Lee indulges his very worst instincts on Da 5 Bloods, and produces a bloated, boring, derivative, meandering mess of a movie that pulsates with an amateurism that is shocking to behold coming from someone with Lee’s past success.

There are so many things wrong with Da 5 Bloods it is difficult to narrow it down to just a few…but I will try.

The script is absolute garbage, as the narrative and the dialogue all feel like they were stolen from a high school freshman’s drama diary. There are so many narrative threads wandering aimlessly through this movie it seems like a dramatic daycare center…and absolutely none of them work…none of them!

The dialogue is only remarkable because it is so disingenuous, inhuman, pretentious and mannered.

Matching the on-the-nose, cringe-worthy dialogue, are the over-the-top performances.

I think Delroy Lindo is a terrific actor, as is Jonathan Majors, but even their talent cannot overcome Lee’s preference for posturing over acting, and theatricality over subtlety.

The entire cast gives performances that feel out of rhythm and forced. Lindo is given the heaviest load to bear, and he definitely strains under it, as his work feels contrived and empty.

As for the filmmaking, Da 5 Bloods contains action sequences, which is something Lee has never really delved into in his previous films…and it shows. The battle scenes in this movie are not just bad, but an embarrassment, like something out of an old tv show.

Lee also made the decision to use his 60 year old actors to play themselves as young men, and while I understand what he was trying to do with that, it ended up reducing the action scenes to pure farce.

The battles are also devoid of all realism and cinematic ingenuity. I watched the movie wondering how the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese won the war but were so damn easy to shoot, especially when they would continuously just run straight at their adversaries.

The technical aspects of the movie are equally amateurish, as it is visually dull and stale, lacking all vibrancy and vitality.

There is one scene, which contains a pivotal plot point, that occurs at the hour and a half mark, that is so poorly executed and so ham-handed in its telegraphing that I was left groaning in disgust. What the hell happened to the director who made the masterpiece Malcolm X? Where is the Do the Right Thing Spike Lee who was an absolute master of his craft? Sadly, that Spike Lee is long gone, and we are left with a director and writer who simply does not remember how to make a worthwhile movie.

Added to those woes is Terence Blanchard’s relentlessly bombastic score, that is so distractingly awful it boggled my mind. Blanchard’s swelling music intrudes anywhere and everywhere it can, suffocating the movie with a monstrosity of musical plushness.

The film does have some bright spots in the form of documentary montages that are sprinkled throughout the film and crackle with insight and intensity, but they are so few and far between they are an afterthought.

In conclusion, the promise and the prowess Spike Lee showed decades ago and ever so briefly in BlackKklansman, seem a very distant memory when watching the abysmal Da 5 Bloods. I simply cannot recommend this movie for any reason, but would encourage you to revisit Spike Lee’s earlier works, most notably Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X, as well as Blackkklansman, in order to see what used to be, and what might have been.

©2020

Spike Lee's 'Da 5 Bloods' is a Dreadful Disappointment, but Virtue-Signaling Establishment Critics Lack the Courage to Tell the Truth About It

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 17 seconds

There’s only one good thing about this film: it exposes mainstream film critics for their self-serving racial paternalism and their pandering to fellow woke elites.

Spike Lee’s new movie, Da 5 Bloods, starring Delroy Lindo, Chadwick Boseman and Jonathan Majors, tells the story of four black Vietnam veterans who return to Vietnam as old men in order to retrieve the body of their long lost comrade and search for buried treasure, premiered this past Friday on Netflix to much fanfare.

Lee has long been an artistic provocateur on issues of race, so as the U.S. once again struggles with civil unrest and social upheaval over racial injustice, you would think now would be a perfect time for a new movie from the Academy Award winner who brought us Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X and BlacKkKlansman.

You would be wrong.

While Da 5 Bloods does have some intriguing moments, particularly the documentary montages interspersed throughout the film, the majority of the movie is a sloppy, bloated, decadent, incoherent, endlessly meandering, melodramatic mess.

Sadly, the movie, which features a trite and derivative script, a relentlessly bombastic score and painfully amateurish action sequences, is too cinematically inept to be of any socially conscious value.

Ironically, the film’s lone insight into race relations in America is entirely unintentional as it exposes liberal film critics for their self-serving racial paternalism and their complete lack of professional integrity.

It is inconceivable to me that any cinematically literate person could conclude Da 5 Bloods is anything but a pronounced disappointment but, remarkably, critics have been falling all over themselves to praise the film, some even claim it is an Oscar favorite.

On the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, critics have given it a staggering 92% score.

What was striking to me about the critical fawning over the movie was that in contrast, audiences at Rotten Tomatoes scored the film a much more reasonable 62%.

A look at the Rotten Tomatoes scores of other prominent films directed by black artists in recent years reveals a similarly suspicious divide between critics and audiences.

For example, in 2015 another Spike Lee film, the abysmal Chi-Raq, garnered an 82% critical score and a 50% audience score.

In 2015, Moonlight, Barry Jenkins’ compelling but flawed Best Picture winner received a blistering 98% critical score compared to a more rational audience score of 79%.

In 2018, the middling Black Panther somehow overcame its notable faults to become a box office smash and a Best Picture nominee while receiving an extraordinary 97% critical score compared to its more accurate audience score of 79%. The 97% critical score makes it the highest rated superhero movie of all time.

Black Panther’s negative18-point disparity between critical score and audience score is three times larger than any other superhero movie in history. 

In 2019 critics adored Barry Jenkins’ film If Beale Street Could Talk at a rate of 95% while audiences gave it a discerningly tepid 70%.

Also in 2019, critics slobbered over Jordan Peele’s confounding horror hit, Us, with a 93% score while audiences recoiled from it with a 59% rating.

The social justice warrior contingent will no doubt deduce from these numbers that the significantly lower audience scores are a result of hordes of incorrigible racists intentionally under rating a movie purely out of racial animus.

The facts betray that argument though, as other unquestionably brilliant black films, such as Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (92 critical/90 audience) and Malcolm X (88 critical/91 audience) as well as John Singleton’s iconic Boyz n the Hood (96 critical/93 audience), have received universal praise and are devoid of such large differences in rating.

It seems obvious to me that mainstream critics are judging current black films not on their merits but on a politically correct curve.

Maybe this biased perspective is born out of fear of being labeled a racist or a heretic in the church of wokeness if they criticize a black film, or maybe it is some sort of pandering paternalism, which in and of itself is its own pernicious form of racism.

Sadly, these critics, just like those public health officials who recently went against their own expert opinions and declared that people needed to get out and protest racism despite the dangers of the Covid-19 pandemic, are frighteningly quick to trade their professional and personal integrity in order to satiate the woke mob and be seen as politically correct “allies”.

Critics that judge films on a racial curve in order to signal their virtue and moral superiority are doing a great disservice to both cinema and artists of color, as neither is well served by their blatant disregard of their professionalism and their pathetic woke posturing and pandering.

In conclusion, Da 5 Bloods is an awful film but it has done a service by exposing the untrustworthy critics in the establishment media for only caring about their social status among woke elites and not giving a damn about the art of cinema.

Now, if you want to watch a worthy Spike Lee film pertinent to this tumultuous time, go watch his unadulterated masterpiece Malcolm X, or the dynamically brilliant Do the Right Thing or the uneven but insightful BlacKkKlansman…but definitely avoid the dismal Da 5 Bloods.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

BlacKkKlansman: A Review

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!! THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!****

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A flawed but insightful, incisive and compelling film that speaks to the struggles of our time.

BlacKkKlansman, directed by Spike Lee and written by Lee and a coterie of others (based on the book Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth), is the true story of Ron Stallworth, a Black cop in Colorado Springs who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan. The film stars John David Washington as Stallworth, with supporting turns from Adam Driver, Laura Harrier and Topher Grace.

At one time, in the late 1980's and early 1990's, Spike Lee was one of the most important filmmakers in cinema. His breakthrough film, 1989's Do the Right Thing, which featured Lee's signature aesthetic of humor, drama and cultural commentary was an explosive piece of cinema that catapulted Lee into the spotlight and into the hearts of cinephiles everywhere.

Lee followed up Do the Right Thing with two films that weren't quite as ground breaking but were noteworthy films nonetheless, Mo' Better Blues (1990) and Jungle Fever (1991). Following those two critical and commercial successes Lee then made his masterpiece, the phenomenal Malcolm X (1992), which is a staggering cinematic achievement.

After reaching the summit with Malcolm X, the cinematic world seemed his for the taking, but then something strange happened to Spike Lee...he lost his fastball. I am not sure why it happened, whether it was a case of the muse abandoning him, his mojo shrinking, his spirit being broken or his just not giving a shit anymore, but I know it most certainly did happened. To be clear, he didn't lose it all at once...but there was a noticeable and precipitous decline in the quality and artistry of his work in the wake of Malcolm X.

The middling movies Crooklyn, Clockers, Get on the Bus, He Got Game and Summer of Sam are all painfully lackluster efforts, especially in the shadow of the murderers row of Do the Right Thing, Mo' Better Blues, Jungle Fever and the Babe Ruth of the canon Malcolm X. The precipitous decline in Lee's filmmaking ability was equaled by his fall from cinematic relevance.

Lee wasn't just losing his artistic and critical fastball, the box office had left him as well as none of those films even made back their production budgets, making this unfortunate streak a near death blow to Lee's career. Directors can churn out average and below average films for decades...but only if they make their investors money or at the very least do not lose their investors money...a perfect example is Ron Howard.

The last Spike Lee film I saw in the theatre was also the first Spike Lee film to make any money since Malcom X, and that was 2002's 25th Hour. Three things stood out about this movie in regards to Lee's other films, the first is that it is a story about a White protagonist and stars a White cast. Secondly, it made more profit than all of the previous seven second tier Lee films (post Malcolm X) combined, and actually made more in net profit than even Malcolm X. And third, even though I thoroughly enjoyed 25th Hour, it was not a "Spike Lee film" as his signature aesthetic was noticeably absent. While I hoped 25th Hour signaled a new phase in Lee's career and began his long climb back into relevance...it didn't. Lee's descent into cinematic irrelevance only seemed to quicken its pace.

In 2006, Lee had a financial hit on his hands with the film Inside Man (which was originally supposed to be directed by...ironically, Ron Howard), but while the box office was stellar, the biggest of his career, Lee's artistry was lacking, and the movie was little more than a Denzel Washington star vehicle rather than a Spike Lee joint, and again, could have been directed by anyone. After Inside Man the wheels came off the cinematic wagon for Lee as he churned out a string of films, one more awful and irrelevant than the next.

Which brings us to BlacKKKlansman. With BlacKKKlansman Spike Lee has done something extraordinary...he got his fastball back. Now, it isn't all the way back, not by a long shot. If Lee was throwing 98 MPH heat in his early 90's heyday, and in his post-Malcolm X phase dropped to an anemic 90 MPH, and in the last decade has been hurling up grotesque 84 MPH meatballs, with BlacKKKlansman he hits a solid and very respectable 92 to 94 MPH on the radar gun.

The story of BlacKKKlansman is the right story at the right time with the right filmmaker. BlacKkKlansman is right in Spike Lee's wheelhouse and shows him to be artistically and cinematically invigorated by the material because it allows him to highlight his best quality...namely his flair for mixing of humor, politics and cultural commentary. Though not as sharply crafted as his sterling early works, this movie is easily Lee's best effort in the last 25 years, hands down. It is vibrantly relevant, pulsatingly alive and at times gloriously infectious.

Lee's direction is energetic as he unfurls an insightful and incisive story that lays bare the perilously combustible nature of our time. Lee's politics, particularly his racial politics, have always been overt in his films, but in BlacKKKlansman he is not only able to get a blunt and brazen message across out in the open, but also covertly weaves a subtler, yet ultimately more nuanced, mature and impactful political message just beneath the emotionally furious surface of the film.

As much as some may take this film as an anti-White and pro-Black screed, they would be missing the deeper messages embedded in the movie. If you can leave your preconceived notions at the door and watch the film looking for Lee's masterful weaving together of the dynamics at play in the Black and White power struggle, you will be surprised, if not downright shocked, as to what the film is telling/teaching you. In my reading of the film Lee's vision is not so starkly black and white (pardon the pun) but he appears to be trying to find allies where he once saw enemies, and is trying to solve problems rather than exacerbate them.

The film's star, John David Washington, gives a charismatic and magnetic performance as Ron Stallworth. Unbeknownst to me prior to seeing the movie, John David is Denzel Washington's son, and the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. John David is certainly not the skillful actor and master craftsman his father is...but that is an unfair bar to set...rather John David is his own actor, and to his benefit he isn't a look-alike of his father either. John David does have his father's undeniable charisma and charm though and he carries this film from start to finish with aplomb and ease. Funny, likeable and genuine, John David Washington's confidence never crosses the river into arrogance, and that is a quality that will serve him well in the future, which will hopefully be very bright.

Adam Driver is an actor I generally do not understand. I do no think he is very good and cannot for the life of me understand why other people do. That said, he does solid work in BlacKKKlansman and is an asset to the movie. Driver's character is a bit underwritten, but he makes the most of what he is given.

The luminous Laura Harrier plays Patrice, the love interest of Ron, and she is excellent. Harrier is able to imbue Patrice with not only a determined strength, but a nagging fragility that is compelling to behold. Harrier makes Patrice a complex character where a lesser actress would've made her a two-dimensional bore.

Topher Grace is spectacular as Klan leader David Duke (yes, THAT David Duke). Topher's performance is so understated and comedically genius as to be sublime. Of course, Topher is aided by the fact that David Duke is such a repulsive and captivating character as to be amazing, but to Topher's credit, he does not make Duke a caricature but rather a very real and genuine human being. Topher's ability to seamlessly and subtly make the Duke character's emotional transitions elevates the film considerably.

It is also worth noting that two actors give terrific performances in very small parts. Alec Baldwin has a cameo as Dr. Kennebrew Beaureguard, and he crushes his minimal screen time, which was a treat since the last time I saw him he was embarrassing himself with his hackneyed performance in Mission Impossible. And Corey Hawkins has a small supporting role as Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) that is electric. The scene where Ture gives a speech is one of the best in the film and Hawkins' performance (and Lee's direction) is dynamic.

As much as I liked BlacKKKlansman, it isn't a perfect film. I thought the Klansman characters were very poorly written, or underwritten as the case may be. The caricature of all Klansman as stupid and redneck is a cheap and easy way to make fun of them, but a bad way to make the case that racism is a prevalent and predominant evil in our society. The Klansmen in the movie lack a genuine desperation and fear which would make them much more complicated (and believable) characters instead of being the cartoon cutouts that are only motivated by sheer lack of I.Q. combined with in-bred hate that the movie makes them out to be.

Lee may have some of his fastball back, but certainly not all of it. The final 1/3 or 1/4 of the film shows the cracks in Lee's skill level. As the story accelerates towards its climax Lee's direction gets messy if not downright sloppy. Lee's cinematic incoherence is matched by some dubious writing and plot twists that make for a muddled and mundane finale to an otherwise pretty riveting narrative.

Lee then adds a coda to the film that is completely extraneous, indulgent, logically absurd and frankly embarrassingly idiotic, that in many ways scuttles the exquisite cinematic experience of the movie. This coda is so amateurish and dreadfully awful it is truly amazing, so much so that I felt myself and my opinion of the movie deflating as the scene wore on. This scene feels like it is from a bad high school morality play rather than a quality piece of cinema. But then...Lee redeems himself with a second coda that ends the movie...which I will not spoil...only to say that it is dramatic and emotional dynamite and is extremely well-done and poignant.

In conclusion, BlacKKKlansman is easily Spike Lee's best film of the last 25 years. It is a relevant piece of cinema that speaks to the troubles of our time by equating it with the troubles in our past. Buoyed by a strong lead performance from John David Washington, BlacKKKlansman is a smart, often subtle and insightful film that packs a wallop, and is well-worth your time and money to go see in the theatre.

©2018