Simmering tensions with a beat
Blindspotting, the directorial debut of Carlos Lopez Estrada, stalks the streets of Oakland with a heightened, spoken-word flow, passionately freestyling on race, police brutality and gentrification through a searing story about two friends: one black, one white.
Though stylistically scattershot, the funky rhythm of Blindspotting undeniably finds a pulse. That’s overwhelmingly thanks to the chemistry between its two stars – Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal – whose characters’ relationship steadily simmers until it boils over in an emotional, theatrical showdown.
Diggs plays Collin, who has just days until his probation is over for a violent incident vaguely referred to as a “fire technicality.” He and Miles (Casal), his more hotheaded lifelong friend, are Bay Area movers who trade poetic versus along their routes while cursing the influx of hipsters to their once grittier neighbourhood.
Collin is the cool, composed one, trying to lay low and get his life back on track. Miles, with a grill in his teeth and righteous fury at the changing face of Oakland, is buying a gun to protect his girlfriend and their young son. Their paths feel increasingly divergent, even as their devotion to one another remains deeply, sweetly sincere.
“We got kinda a Calvin and Hobbes thing going on,” says Miles of their rapport.
While Collin is stopped at a red light on his way home one night, a black man runs in front of the truck, turns down the street and, just after pleading not to be shot, is mercilessly gunned down by a white police officer who’s standing just outside Collin’s window. Collin is too fearful to come forward, but the incident shakes him. In one of the movie’s more vivid digressions, Collin dreams of himself standing trial with the murderous cop as his judge, while choking on bullets.
As you can tell, Blindspotting isn’t shy about channelling topical concerns into hard-to-miss symbolism. There are coincidences, too, that stretch plausibility, as Estrada juggles lowkey scenes full of Oakland flavour with heavier thematic moments. The ride can be a riot, especially when Utkarsh Ambudkar drops in as a hyper, awe-struck passerby to relate the story of Collin’s arrest.
It’s hard to remember a recent movie that so powerfully distilled social issues into a single relationship. Collin and Miles badly want to ignore the differences created by their skin colour, but it gets harder for them not to acknowledge their divergent experiences of privilege and justice, eventually leading to a back-alley reckoning. Oakland’s identity issues become their own.
Diggs, a talented actor, so comfortably slides from fiery monologues to deadpan comedy. He and Casal together are electric. But there’s an upside to the film so eagerly jumping from anguish to slapstick, from social drama to buddy movie. Blindspotting is, like the Oakland it so dearly loves, always many things at once.
Blindspotting Cast: Daveed Diggs, Rafael Casal, Janina Gavankar Director: Carlos Lopez Estrada