BlacKkKlansman (2018) on Netflix
R20182h 16mComedyCrimeDramaHistory
Ron Stallworth, the first Black officer in Colorado Springs, phones a Ku Klux Klan chapter posing as a white man. His colleague Flip Zimmerman meets the members in person.
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- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.5/10317,558 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes96%
Trailer
Plot summary
Ron Stallworth joins the Colorado Springs police department as its first Black officer, works the records room, and applies for undercover duty. At a rally where Kwame Ture speaks he meets Patrice Dumas, who heads Colorado College's Black Student Union. After reading about a local Ku Klux Klan chapter, Ron calls it on the phone pretending to be white and gets talking to its president, Walter Breachway. The members want to meet him in person, so his Jewish colleague Flip Zimmerman goes in his place. Flip sits in on their gatherings with members including Felix Kendrickson and a man named Ivanhoe, while Ron keeps up calls with the Klan's Grand Wizard, David Duke, and starts dating Patrice, who does not know he is a police officer.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about BlacKkKlansman (2018)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Spike Lee told his crew to dress in suits and dresses on the day Harry Belafonte filmed his cameo as an activist recounting the lynching of Jesse Washington, to honor Belafonte in his final film role.
- BlacKkKlansman won Best Adapted Screenplay at the 91st Academy Awards from six nominations, the first competitive Oscar of Spike Lee's career.
- Boots Riley, whose Sorry to Bother You also premiered in 2018, called BlacKkKlansman dishonestly marketed as a true story, saying it glossed over the real Ron Stallworth's work for COINTELPRO and fictionalized a bombing to make police look like heroes.
- The film fictionalizes events: Klan members only talked about potential firebombings and no bombing actually took place, and the character of Patrice is entirely made up.
- The real Ron Stallworth never revealed to the Klan that he was black, and David Duke only learned it from an exposé written about Stallworth's career in 2006.
- Spike Lee ends the film with a tribute to Heather Heyer, the counter-protester killed on August 12, 2017, in the Charlottesville car attack during the Unite the Right rally.
