Blindspotting

[bear88]

Posted: 9/26/18 at 3:07am

The film never really caught on, but Blindspotting, starring Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal, is a compelling, tense, and interesting take on race relations, gentrification and its costs, as well as the aftereffects of a traumatic event. Diggs and Casal wrote it together, and play best friends who work as movers in Oakland.  

Unlike his flamboyant turns as Lafayette and Jefferson in Hamilton, Diggs has a low-key role for most of the film, as an ex-con trying to complete his last few days on probation. Casal is his bad influence friend, who's always doing stupid things and who is an old-school Oakland resident who resents gentrification but can 'pass' because he's white. 

Diggs anchors the film, with support from Jasmine Cephas Jones, another Hamilton original cast member, as the Casal character's girlfriend and Janina Gavankar as the Diggs character's ex.

Blindspotting is not a perfect film, but it's smart, thought-provoking, and done in 95 tense minutes. As a Great Comet fan, I have issues with Casal's social media campaign against that show over the casting flap involving Okieriete Onaodowan. But credit where it's due - he and Diggs wrote and starred in a good movie that felt like a labor of love. 

[pushdabutton]

Posted: 9/28/18 at 9:40pm

I saw Blindspotting the day it came out in the movie theaters. I thought it was excellent. Very powerful and thought provoking. I loved seeing Daveed Diggs and Jasmine Cephas Jones after having seen them in Hamilton on Broadway. I would recommend watching it on DVD when it is released.