Movie Review: The Best Of Enemies (2019)

Genre: Biographical Drama  

Director: Robin Bissell  
Starring: Sam Rockwell, Taraji P. Henson, Anne Heche, Bruce McGill  
Running Time: 133 minutes  

Synopsis: The setting is Durham, North Carolina in 1970, with the schools still segregated. C.P. Ellis (Sam Rockwell) is the local leader of the Ku Klux Klan, while Ann Atwater (Taraji P. Henson) is a black rights organizer. When a black school is damaged by fire, a community debate erupts on whether to allow the black students to attend a white school. Bill Riddick (Babou Ceesay) is recruited to organize a community charette and cajoles C.P. and Ann into the co-chair roles, exposing the two adversaries to opposing perspectives.

What Works Well: Based on actual events, writer and director Robin Bissel crafts a tense but hopeful drama of simmering racial conflict. Under the shadow of a virulent white supremacist culture intent on protecting the status quo, C.P. and Ann co-exist in the realm of economic stress, the search for belonging, and caring for family. The school debate becomes a catalyst to seek commonalities, the community's core evolved enough to gather and argue within a civilized process. C.P.'s journey is more profound, Sam Rockwell's every gesture and glance a study in conflicted complexity.

What Does Not Work As Well: The running time would have benefited from a 15 minute trim, and some of the sermonizing is delivered with straight-to-the-camera bluntness. Ann Atwater is often portrayed as just angry, and her backstory is shortchanged in favour of emphasis on C.P.'s reality.

Key Quote:

Ann (to C.P.): Same God made you, made me.

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