Film Review: "Blindspotting"

Photo via Lionsgate

Carlos Lopez Estrada makes his feature film debut with Blindspotting, a timely drama starring Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal. The film, which was co-written by Diggs and Casal, is perhaps one of the most important films that anyone can see given today’s social climate. The story follows Collin (Diggs) in the months following his release from prison. With three days remaining on his probation, all he has to do is stay out of trouble in order to be a free man. That proves to be easier said than done with his troublemaking best friend, Miles (Casal), hanging around him all the time. After witnessing a police officer fatally shooting an African-American man, Collin’s world gets flipped upside-down and he finds himself re-evaluating his relationship with Miles.

            For a film that is 95 minutes long, Blindspotting has a lot of moving pieces, all of which are excellently developed. At its most basic, this is a film about friendship. The events that unfold in this story force Collin to re-evaluate his friendship with Miles. This creates tension between two guys who have been friends since they were kids. As a result, Collin is left to figure if having Miles in his life is worth the constant trouble he brings. Where their friendship ends up is completely dependant on how each of these characters react to the tension building between them and by the end of the film you completely understand where they ultimately end up. 

            Friendship is a key component of the story because it is what helps drive the narrative forward, and it gives us reason to care for these characters, but this film is about so much more than that. As the film puts it, “blindspotting” happens when we fail to see the whole picture and instead just focus on one element of it. For Collin, he believes that when people look at him all they see is “a black guy with dreads” as if that alone makes him some type of monster. To fix this, his ex-girlfriend, Val (Janina Gavankar), suggests that he lose the dreads and change his image. He refutes this idea because the reality is that he is not a monster and all he wants is to become a better version of himself without having to lose his identity. Blindspotting discusses race and identity in ways that most films can only ever dream of. It is unapologetically brash when it comes to portraying what it is like to be a black person in America and it leaves the audience no other choice but to examine the way in which we view people. 

            While some of the topics at hand are hard to discuss, they are absolutely necessary. Blindspotting explores police brutality, and the ways in which such acts of violence can affect the communities where they occur. Collin is haunted by the memory of the shooting, while Miles, who is in an interracial relationship, struggles to figure out how to properly raise his son in a world that will undoubtedly look down on him because of the color of his skin. The filmalso explores the gentrification that has occurred across America through the years and intelligently explains how that has made long-time neighborhood residents feel like outsiders in their own town. As a white male in a predominantly black town, this is something that Miles struggles with more so than most of the other characters in the film.

            With all of the topics this film tackles, you would think it is a hard-hitting drama. At times it is, but for the vast majority of the film Blindspotting provides more laughs than most comedies. This is due to the phenomenal, and clearly real, chemistry between the leads, Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal. As a result, the events of this film become much more manageable to digest and allows the audience to really take in the various messages that the story provides. 

            Blindspotting isn’t just one of the year’s best films, it is one of the most important ones. It is extremely intelligent in the way it uses rhymes and metaphors to get its point across. No moment is wasted and that is one of the best things about this film. Every word, every action and every event matters. It is highly relevant, it aims to make a change in our society and it has fun doing so. It is easy to see the passion that everyone involved in this film had for the project. Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal, who worked on getting the film made for years, deserve all the praise in the world for crafting such a heartfelt story. Blindspotting is cinema at its absolute best and it should not be missed.