Blindspotting (2018)
Directed by Carlos López Estrada
Collin must make it through his final three days of probation for a chance at a new beginning. He and his troublemaking childhood best friend, Miles, work as movers, and when Collin witnesses a police shooting, the two men’s friendship is tested as they grapple with identity and their changed realities in the rapidly-gentrifying neighborhood they grew up in.
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What critics compared Blindspotting to
Like “Do the Right Thing” some 30 years ago, “Get Out” last year and “Sorry to Bother You” right now, “Blindspotting” is a searing, intense, sometimes wickedly funny and boldly honest look at race relations, and how we perceive one another — and the horrible mistakes we make based on certain stereotypes that are formulated from the time we are children.
Whether it's Do the Right Thing in Brooklyn, or the Watts portrayed in Killer of Sheep, or Friday and South Central, or Magnolia's journey through L.A.'s aspirational neighborhoods, they become cinematic landmarks.
That is, Blindspotting is the freshest commentary on race relations since Black Lives Matter, and in a film sense, since Do the Right Thing .
Movies are almost always better when they’re about a specific place, and Blindspotting has a facility and familiarity with local slang and archetypes an outsider couldn’t fake, explained in broad character vignettes reminiscent of Spike Lee’s equally loving portrait of Bed-Stuy in Do The Right Thing .
“Do the Right Thing” will likely come to some moviegoers' minds as “Blindspotting” tailspins into its fraught confrontation between Collin and Miles, but the Lee joint it more closely resembles is “Jungle Fever,” with its dexterously handled shifts between humor and pathos.
In the long history of energetic films mixing up heavy drama and stylistic humor, Blindspotting has much in common with something like Do The Right Thing .
But Blindspotting is also a nod to Danny Boyle’s 1996 film Trainspotting, about a group of friends in Edinburgh, Scotland, who are disenchanted with the stuffy conformist choices that capitalism has foisted upon them.
“Blindspotting” carries the burden of associating itself with Danny Boyle’s 1996 mind-blower “Trainspotting.”
Wanna know why Daveed Diggs (Blindspotting) is so hip, Leslie Odom Jr. (Harriet) is smooth, Renée Elise Goldsberry (Waves) is graceful and Anthony Ramos (A Star Is Born) so cool?
More than ten years ago, longtime best friends Daveed Diggs (“black-ish,” “Wonder,” Tony-winner for “Hamilton”) and spoken word poet/academic Rafael Casal began working on “Blindspotting,” inspired by their experience growing up in the uneasily gentrifying Oakland, California area long before either became successful.
It took the pair about 10 years to turn their ideas into a movie, and in the intervening years between Blindspotting ’s conception and its Sundance debut this past January, Diggs — who electrified audiences and gained a huge following when he originated the roles of Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette in the hit musical Hamilton — became a star.
His character, Collin, freestyle raps at times during the film in a way that reminds one of the Hamilton soundtrack–interestingly enough, Diggs originally played the role of Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in the hit musical.
Hamilton alum Daveed Diggs and his writing partner Rafael Casal manage to do this flawlessly, hitting the audience squarely in the gut with the intense and moving Blindspotting .
The debut feature from Carlos López Estrada, Blindspotting is written by its two stars – cinematic newcomer Rafael Casal (a veteran performer and founder of the #BARS project at New York’s Public Theater) and theater/TV star Daveed Diggs ( Hamilton ) –and set in Oakland, California, from which both men hail.