Blindspotting is a movie that was not marketed as what it is. Though, to be fair, what it actually is is a much tougher sell.
Since it only wound up grossing a little over $4 million, maybe it’s time for the Blu-ray, out this week and on VOD, to try a different tactic. Blindspotting is absolutely not a taut thriller about a man who witnesses a murder and must escape before he gets either thrown back in jail or killed. But contrary to its title’s meaning — that once you see an object as one thing, you’ll have trouble seeing it as a different thing because your first impression will always be what you see first – Blindspotting is a movie that improves the more you take it as it comes, rather than as you thought it was going to come.
Collin (Daveed Diggs) is a black ex-convict on the last three days of his probation. Miles (Rafael Casal) is his white best friend, a tattooed crook with a short fuse trying to raise an interracial son in Oakland, California. Miles is the one who causes most of the trouble, including the crime for which Collin did the time, but Collin often takes the blame because witnesses, especially the hipster gentrification crowd, see them both and tend to blame the black man in their memories. With only three days to go, can Collin stay out of the trouble Miles inevitably brings into his orbit long enough to escape an extended sentence?
BZZZT! Wrong question. Director Carlos Lopez Estrada establishes a ticking clock, but then he doesn’t do anything with it. When Collin finds himself in dangerous situations, he tends to escape pretty quickly. Though it’s also established that coming home after curfew comes with stiff penalties, he gets caught twice and is penalized with a mere verbal dress-down. This isn’t Hitchcock; it’s more a mix of Clerks and Friday, as Casal and Diggs wrote the script based on what they knew growing up, and stories they heard. The story format is as loose as can be, with the parole serving as a vague enough skeleton on which to hand various alternately amusing, tense, and sad scenes of Collin and Miles about their daily routine as movers, occasionally hustling, sometimes butting heads, and often freestyle rapping.
As the trailers showed, Collin does indeed witness a murder-by-cop, but the only tension it creates is in his own head, as he has nightmares and visions of numerous dead men shot for nothing. Eventually, in ways that are super-telegraphed and obvious, the killer crosses his path by screen-written coincidence, and what ensues is much more powerful and effective than you’d fear. I’ve seen a good few movies lately that incorporate poetry slam-style rhythms in both word and pace, but this does it the best. What did you expect from a Hamilton actor?
In the late ’90s indie boom, Blindspotting would likely have been a huge sleeper hit, but today it’s the kind of thing that’s tough to market easily. In some ways it is, like Seinfeld, “about nothing,” but it’s also about everything: race, class, stratification, gentrification, friendship, male bonding and fracturing, and of course, how nothing is ultimately defined by one thing. Through the prism of two guys goofing off as much as their schedule and life situation will allow.
Two commentary tracks are included; they were meant to be just one, but Estrada had a music video shoot the day the actor/writers were booked, so he came back on a different day to record his own. It’s way more subdued and basic, while Diggs and Casal are rowdy (Casal’s concussion story is both terrifying and hilarious) and constantly cracking each other up; you come away feeling like they, and not Estrada, were the true auteurs here. Deleted scenes include a lot of extra bonus freestyling, and the behind-the-scenes featurettes are longer than usual, including one that’s compiled from Estrada’s camera-phone footage on set, and gives just about every major crew member a chance to introduce themselves, which is a cool thing to do.
Kevin Smith parlayed this sort of thing into a cinematic universe, which is easier to do, perhaps, when you’re dealing with characters who realistically aren’t likely to get shot fleeing from police. I’d be happy to see this world extend further, with not just more of Collin and Miles, but everyone the y come across. After all, I’m still not sure exactly what Wayne Knight’s doing here, besides enhancing the loose Seinfeld comparison I made earlier in this review — his true purpose must be revealed someday.
