Spike Lee will serve as jury president for the upcoming 73rd annual Cannes Film Festival. The writer/director/actor/producer is the first black person to hold the prestigious position in the festival’s history. Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman” was awarded the Grand Prix at the festival in 2018.

Starring: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace, Jasper Paakkonen Director: Spike Lee

AN incredible true-life story told in a boisterously exaggerated way, “BlacKkKlansman” is certainly Spike Lee’s most flat-out entertaining film in quite a long time, as well as his most commercial.

Telling the tall tale of a rookie Colorado Springs cop who, in cahoots with a Jewish member of the force, successfully infiltrated the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, the director takes the shenanigans to almost cartoonish levels of humor at times but makes sure to hit home with countless examples of cultural and political racism, some of which have been surmounted but many of which still afflict the nation today.

The movie was awarded the Grand Prix at the festival in 2018.

It’s been a while, since around the mid- to late-1990s, that Lee’s work was felt to be in the vanguard of serious and widely seen films about race issues in the U.S., even as he has continued to make smaller films that addressed diverse political matters in pointed ways. Although it is set in the early 1970s, this film should change that, as Lee doesn’t hesitate to draw direct lines from the more institutional racism of nearly a half-century ago to Charlottesville and other recent events, while for good measure again dredging up the racism in such old classics as “The Birth of a Nation” and “Gone With the Wind.”

Lee’s got a full barrel of ammo and clearly he intends to use it.

After a faux newsreel in which Alec Baldwin as a racialist leader spews a white supremacist harangue about our descent into a mongrel nation, we witness the integration of the Colorado Springs police force with the arrival of Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), an Afro-sporting college grad who quickly asserts his interest in undercover work.

Despite the resentment of some racist elements on the force, Ron’s wish is granted sooner rather than later when he’s assigned to cover and surreptitiously record a local speech given by former Black Panther leader/African nationalist Kwame Ture aka Stokely Carmichael (Corey Hawkins). That night, Ron also makes nice with the event’s organizer, Colorado State Black Student Union leader Patrice (Laura Harrier).

Mere luck opens the door to Ron’s entrée to the KKK. Responding to an ad, Ron, who jokes that he can speak stereotypically white or black, asks for material from the local chapter but is then asked to come in for a personal meeting. That’s not going to happen for the obvious reason, so to further the inquiry, fellow cop Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) volunteers to pose as Ron for the face-to-face encounter.

After some exposure to Flip, local chapter frontman Felix (Jasper Paakkonen) is suspicious of him and tries to force him into a lie detector test because he’s (rightly) convinced Flip is Jewish. But, because the Klan members are such dopes and are rightly impressed by former soldier Flip’s marksmanship, “Ron” is quickly invited to become a member, which eventually leads to interactions with national KKK boss David Duke (Topher Grace).

Lee crosses the line between seriousness and near-slapstick countless times as he sinks his teeth into this ripe opportunity to chew on and spit out the KKK and all it stands for once and for all. Keeping it all credible is another issue, and one can feel the sometimes wobbly tone and credulity-straining contributions of the four screenwriters crashing into one another as Lee attempts to establish a consistency while continuing to fire his broadsides again the Klan specifically and racial injustice generally.

“Ron” eventually develops a personal phone relationship with Duke, who agrees to come to Colorado for the official membership ceremony for new members. This ends in a shambles for the Klan but is not without serious, even possibly deadly consequences, which Lee uses as the opening notes of what comes to feel like the thunderous symphonic finale, into which he stuffs a Harry Belafonte lecture about a dreadful lynching, The Birth of a Nation, Charlottesville and other Trump-era violence and an honest-to-God cross-burning ceremony. He doesn’t miss a trick.

(SD-Agencies)