Spike Lee has been directing films since the late 1970s, but he officially broke through to mainstream attention in 1989 with Do The Right Thing, and in 1992 with the biopic Malcolm X. A critically acclaimed movie about the black rights activist who rose to prominence during the 1960s, Malcolm X starred Denzel Washington in the titular role.
Since then, Spike Lee went onto direct such films as Crooklyn, He Got Game, Summer of Sam, The 25th Hour, and the American remake of Oldboy. He also notably directed the four-hour-long documentary When The Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts, which detailed the events of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation on New Orleans, Louisiana.
Today, Spike Lee’s newest offering is in select theaters and kicking up quite a response from critics, whose reviews seem to range from “really good” to “great.”
BlacKkKlansman is currently sitting at a 97 percent critical score on Rotten Tomatoes and is garnering a lot of Oscar buzz, although due to its limited release it is only shaping up to be the fifth highest grossing film of the weekend.
Johnny Oleksinski of the New York Post called the movie “chilling and unforgettable,” giving BlacKkKlansman a perfect score.
“At a moment in which policing — even fictional policing — is a divisive topic, Lee treats cops fairly. The station has good officers who work hard to serve justice, and bad ones who act above the law. What he’s made with BlacKkKlansman is an important tribute to small-town heroes — cops, activists and good neighbors — arguing, using news footage of the 2017 Charlottesville, Va., white-supremacist rally, that the world still needs more people like them.”
BlacKkKlansman details the true story of Detective Ron Stallworth with the Colorado Springs Police department. Stallworth infiltrated the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. In the film Stallworth speaks with Klan leader David Duke, who went on to support Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Slate Magazine recently wrote an article detailing the fact and fiction of the BlacKkKlansman, separating which parts were concurrent with Stallworth’s memoirs and which were written for the movie.
Critics aren’t the only ones enjoying Spike Lee’s newest movie venture. Audience scores for BlacKkKlansman are solid as well, with 75 percent of audience members giving the film a favorable review as well. IMDb users currently give the movie a 7.3 out of a possible 10, while the review aggregate site Metacritic awards the movie an 83 out 100, indicating universal acclaim.
BlacKkKlansman stars John David Washington as Ron Stallworth and Adam Driver (Star Wars: The Last Jedi) as his partner, Flip Zimmerman, a Jewish American.
Currrently the movie has made an estimated $3.9 million at the domestic box office and is expected to gross just under $10 million for its opening weekend.
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