Review of Blindspotting (2018) by Legitsalt — 08 May 2020

Blindspotting is a passion project, brought to life by Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs. The duo wrote, starred, and scored the movie and are the centre of the movie’s success. Blindspotting is extremely fast-moving, covering a lot of ground in its relatively short 1 hour 36 min runtime.

Blindspotting presents many of modern-day America’s pressing issues with an easily consumable vignette. The movie is filled with wit, charisma, and charm. While the movie isn’t always saying something, it is always doing something.

Blindspotting follows Daveed Diggs’ character Collin on his last few days of probation. Collin is a black man who received unequal punishment at the hands of the criminal justice system. The inciting element of the movie is during Collin’s drive home with only a handful of days of probation left; while stopped at a traffic light, a black man runs out in front of the truck he is driving, skirts around it and is shortly thereafter shot to death by a pursuing police officer.

Collin is kept awake at night by PTSD set off by the event and is thrown into chaos from his previous limbo. Miles, played by Rafael Casal, committed the same crime as Collin but was not charged, as such Collin holds some amount of underlying resentment for his friend.

Blindspotting explores interracial character relations and relations between classes. The movie explores gentrification, appropriation of black culture, and police brutality. But at the same time, the movie is filled with scenes like the one in the barbershop, where Miles has a rap battle with the head stylist about pawning off a box of old hair curlers.

The movie may be rough at a few points, but this is easily missed because of how entrancing the movie is. Blindspotting is exactly what it needs to be when it needs to be it.