Rent The Best of Enemies on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by: Robin Bissell, Osha Gray Davidson(inspired by true events chronicled in 'The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South' by)
Directed by: Robin Bissell
Starring: Taraji P. Henson, Sam Rockwell, Babou Ceesay, Anne Heche, Wes Bentley, Nick Searcy, John Gallagher Jr.,
Rated: PG-13
Watch the trailer
Plot
Civil rights activist Ann Atwater faces off against C.P. Ellis, Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan, in 1971 Durham, North Carolina over the issue of school integration.
Verdict
A buy the numbers civil rights era movie where a white racist befriends a black woman and has a transformative experience. While it's based on a true story, this feels like a Hollywood fantasy. It's not a bad movie. The performances from Henson and Rockwell are great, but I feel like I've seen this movie a few times before.
Skip it.
Review
This is a less interesting Green Book. It checks the boxes of a civil rights type movie with a racial divide where the white character is transformed. At least Green Book had interesting, multi-dimensional characters.
Rockwell often plays people from the South and he also played a racist in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
The inciting incident is a fire at a black middle school. Atwater (Taraji P. Henson) is pushing for integration in the South during the '60s. It's implied the Klan are the ones that started the school fire. They don't want integration. The movie sets up this good and evil face off, black versus white. There's clearly a right side to that argument, but there's also the component of the ignorant who don't understand or those who don't like change. That's no excuse, but that barrier is easier to overcome than people that are just malicious. I wondered how this would live up to the premise as it seems impossible for Atwater and Ellis (Sam Rockwell) to even be friendly. It's a ridiculous premise, and that's what makes it engaging.
The town creates a commission to decide what to do with the schools. Atwater and Ellis are selected as the leads. A just outcomes seems all but impossible. Ann show's Ellis and his family kindness which of course changes his mind, but I thought the avenue to that would be the displaced children.
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| Sam Rockwell, Babou Ceesay, Taraji P. Henson |
Ellis has a conversation with the hardware store owner, trying to sway him to vote against integration. Ellis halts his push when he realizes the owner served in Vietnam. Ellis has a lot of respect for veterans, and the owner makes the point that his black store manager served too. This is the conversation that best captures Ellis's contradiction in logic.
Through these various experiences Ellis's beliefs are challenged. It seems a bit too easy as the repercussions from embracing what is right I imagine would be severe. He ranks high in his terrorist group. Everything comes down to the vote on whether the schools should integrate. The end is over dramatic with a big speech. We knew where this would headed from the beginning.
I can't help but think about what would happen after integration. I imagine that would be very difficult for black students. I also wouldn't be surprised if Ellis got killed by his group for what he says. This serves a happy ending where Ellis is shunned by his group, but Atwater makes it all better. I don't think this situation would have any kind of a happy ending. The movie has shown us how terrible the Klan are that I don't believe they'd let Ellis go free and clear.
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