Blindspotting

photo courtesy of redcarpetcrash.com

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

     Real life friends Daveed Diggs (Hamilton) and Rafael Casal star in Blindspotting, a story about the complicated relationship between two best buddies in rapidly-gentrifying Oakland, California. After Collin (Diggs) witnesses a police shooting, he becomes haunted by the experience—and increasingly wary of his friend Miles (Casal), whose troublemaking attitude endangers the people around him. In the last few days of his long probation, Collin begins to see his surroundings with new eyes.

     Diggs and Casal (who also wrote the script) are trying to do something ambitious with Blindspotting. The movie has a peculiar tone, a balance between two extremes—in one moment, highly stylized buddy-adventure humor, in the next, violence, terror, and paranoia. And although the mixture of the two is sometimes messy or indulgent, both elements work together in service of a determined conviction at the movie’s core, sometimes bubbling under the surface, sometimes bursting forth as the floodgates open (yes, Hamilton fans rejoice, there is rapping).

photo courtesy of theatlantic.com

     Viewed as a whole, there’s no question that the experiment is a success. Blindspotting has a lot to say, but it conveys its message not only with power—as in two genuinely gasp-worthy moments—and technical achievement, but also with profound sincerity. You can feel that Diggs and Casal have lived this reality (at least to some extent) and know it well. Their first-hand experience also fuels their performances, which are gregarious enough to compensate for some poorer acting from the supporting cast.

     Blindspotting occasionally struggles with the execution. Balancing two such disparate tones is a difficult feat to manage (just ask The Visit), and at times the filmmakers can’t make the transition between drama and comedy convincingly or without awkwardness. Some jokes, predominantly toward the beginning, don’t quite land.

photo courtesy of variety.com

     But what’s remarkable is how often the juxtaposition does work. Blindspotting can make you laugh, then make you terrified, then tell you something meaningful in just a few moments. If nothing else, the movie’s empathetic capacity should excite us for what this creative partnership will continue to produce down the road.

TRAILER

Watch the trailer here.

photo courtesy of theplaylist.net