BLACKkKLANSMAN

I knew what  Blackkklansman was going to be like before I even saw it.

I knew it would be highly stylized, and since it was set in the 1970s, the soundtrack would include plenty of old soul hits. And I knew it would be loaded with stereotypes and cliches. The African Americans would be beautiful and dignified; the Klansmen would be hideous.

That's how it is in Spike Lee's universe. Reality and subtlety have always been sideswiped by a lot of fist pumping and posturing, and Lee's white villains  crumble like the Wicked Witch of the West after Dorothy throws water on her.

But that doesn't mean Lee's movies aren't entertaining. They often have the sweep and grandeur of an old WPA post office mural, and the visceral punch of wartime propaganda posters. 

The new one, based on a supposedly true story, concerns Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), a rookie cop trying to infiltrate a Colorado chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Since Stallworth is black, he enlists the help of Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) a Jewish detective, to actually get up close to the local racists and learn their plans. Zimmerman is game, but he insists his work is merely a job, not a  crusade, as it appears to be for Stallworth.

The highlight of the movie is watching Stallworth and Zimmerman work together as they prepare to get behind KKK lines. As in the best cop dramas, they grow to respect each other and work well together.

Stallworth  even gets chummy with KKK grand dragon David Duke (played with noxious glee by Topher Grace), while Zimmerman adapts a redneck manner, and is soon a card carrying member of America's most notorious hate group.

It's not an easy job, though. One of the local Klansmen is suspicious of Zimmerman from the start. Meanwhile, Stallworth is falling in love with the sassy president of a nearby student union, an Angela Davis wannabe who suspects Stallworth might be a cop. (Or, in the colorful parlance of the day, a "pig.")

This is all based on a memoir published in 2014 by Stallworth, but sometimes it's a bit much to swallow. The episodes depicted in Blackkklansman tie together too neatly, with too many coincidences, too many hairpin escapes.

Lee worked on the adaptation of Stallworth's book with three other screenwriters, and sometimes it all feels too much like an old episode of Starsky & Hutch. Plus, I seriously doubt that every young black person in 1970s Colorado was decked out in formfitting  leather, with perfectly coiffed "naturals." Sorry, I'm not buying it.

Still, the movie has a nice momentum. The Klan members are just menacing enough that we fear Zimmerman will eventually be exposed. A Klansman named Felix, played by Finnish actor Jasper Pääkkönen, has a thousand mile stare that threatens to burn right through Zimmerman's face.

Unfortunately, Lee doesn't reign Pääkkönen in, and the staring grows monotonous. That's the main problem with the movie. The KKK is portrayed as a bunch of cartoon psychos. We know the KKK is a cruel, loveless lot, but did Lee really need to show them sitting around watching D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, practically choking on their own laughter? I doubt the Klan needs old movies as fuel. 

I also question a scene involving Pääkkönen and his wife in bed, giggling like children at the prospect of killing some African Americans. There's no way Stallworth, whose book this is based on, could've known this scene took place. Why are we shown it?

Another example of Lee's heavyhanded approach is in a scene where the leader of the Black Panthers is speaking at a college gathering. Lee pans across several dreamy black faces, mostly female. The work of cinematographer Chayze Irvin is impressive, but the effect is numbing. If Lee's image of the KKK is a cartoon, his image of young African Americans is as posed and contrived as an old cover of Life.

Ultimately, Lee's movie is surprisingly tame and conventional, with some cute blaxploitation riffs, and a feel-good sub-theme of black and white cops working together. It's like any Spike Lee movie, at times inspired, at times sophomoric.

Some have  accused Lee of portraying the Colorado Springs cops as too likeable, and of making Stallworth into a more heroic character than he may have actually been. But if his movie is a bit soft in the middle, Lee makes up for it by including some closing clips of recent  white supremacist rallies that grew violently out of hand. These clips show what really happens when you try to match hate with hate, fear with fear. Nothing in Lee's movie can match the ugliness of reality.