Keeping up with the Klan
SPIKE’S ATTACK ON FAR-RIGHT
RON Stallworth has dined out on his incredible story for decades…
In late 1978, while the only black detective in Colorado Springs, he noticed the Ku Klux Klan had launched a recruitment drive in the personal section of his local paper.
Intrigued, he replied with a letter pledging to “further the cause of the white race”. Before long, he was in telephone contact with the leader of his local chapter.
Ron asked if he could join the secret society and the Klansman said “yes”. So began one of the most unlikely police stings in history.
It sounds easy but it wasn’t exactly straightforward. Clearly, a black face would raise eyebrows at a cross burning. So he teamed up with a white detective who would play him at any face-to-face meetings.
It’s such a great yarn, it is surprising Hollywood took so long to get round to it. A gritty, 70s styled procedural like Serpico or a dark farce like American Hustle are the models that spring to mind.
Sadly, after Get Out director Jordan Peele dropped out of the project it fell into the hands of a past-his-prime Spike Lee.
And it doesn’t take long to work out how Lee is going to attack the story – with a sledgehammer.
The movie kicks off with a comedy sketch from actor and Saturday Night Live Trump impersonator Alec Baldwin who plays a hapless white power extremist who keeps fluffing his lines while shooting a recruitment film.
His racist language is shocking, but not especially funny, and it has no connection with the story.
It does, however, set the tone perfectly for
Lee’s film.
For two hours, Ron’s fascinating yarn is swamped in broad satire, boundary-pushing racist language and on-the-nose Trump bashing.
After Baldwin’s sketch and a baffling clip of Gone With The Wind, Lee finally gets down to the story. We begin with Ron, played by John David Washington (Denzel’s son), spotting a recruitment poster and immediately signing up for the police. After short scenes of him suffering racist abuse from a bad cop, he falls in with good cops Jimmy (Michael Buscemi) and Flip (Adam Driver). Ron’s first undercover assignment is to infiltrate a rally for Black Power activist Kwame Ture (Corey Hawkins), where he falls for activist Patrice (Laura Harrier). Lee lets us savour Ture’s speech, but he does not fully explore Ron’s inner conflict.
Still, it doesn’t take Ron long to find a cause he can buy into and we see him finding the advert and persuading Flip to meet the Klan.
Lee paints the racists with broad strokes – spineless, paranoid, often drunk and almost certifiably stupid.
In case we miss the point, they also talk of making America great again. We even get a scene where real-life Klan boss David Duke (Topher Grace) talks about running for public office. Ron and Flip find this hilarious – American voters aren’t that stupid, they tell each other.
Alongside the clunky grand-standing, there are well-crafted moments of suspense, but the flat lighting and the one-note characters give it the feel of a cheesy 70s cop series. It’s Kojak with Tourette’s.
After an messy finale, Lee switches to footage of the racist Charlottesville attack and Trump’s refusal to condemn the “alt-right”.
If you’re a racist Trump fan who admires the Klan and pays to see Spike Lee movies, this political satire might just change your life.
But I suspect the film would have had more of an impact if Ron’s story was allowed to speak for itself.