This is a cracking depiction of the infiltration of the KKK by the courageous (and the first) black Colorado Springs police officer Ron Stallworth (John David Washington). Initially assigned some fairly mundane tasks in the records room, his boss decides that his skills might better be used working with the "radical" black student group - led by Patrice Dumas. Dumas has invited civil rights leader Kwame Ture to come and speak to them, and it falls to this undercover cop to ensure that this all goes off with as few hitches as possible. Meantime, he also answers an ad in the local press and pretty easily his voice is able to infiltrate the local KKK operation. An obviously problematic face-to-face meeting is required, and for that purpose he is soon allied with colleague Flip Zimmerman, a Jew not unfamiliar with racial slurs himself. It is the latter man who impersonates Stallworth and his initiation amongst these profoundly violent and suspicious individuals proves pretty perilous. Spike Lee now takes us on a dangerous, quite frequently edge-of-the-seat, journey as these men become more and more subsumed into cultures that they both begin to understand and increasingly loathe in equal measure. The pace of this film is superb, with the degree of menace increasing as the narrative develops. The pair in the lead are great character actors and are well supported by Laura Harrier (Dumas); by the truly odious David Duke - the KKK supremo (Topher Grace) and Corey Hawkins (Kwame Ture). The levels of ignorance and bigotry displayed here are eye watering and 2½ hours just flies by.
