Blindspotting puts a buddy comedy under pressure, and the contrast between the good times and the bad isn’t jarring or unbelievable. It’s life.

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“Loyalty is tricky, Collin. It’s a moving target”. Miles’ closing words in Blindspotting are a rather fitting description of the film itself. Hamilton alum Daveed Diggs and Def poet Rafael Casal began writing the film after the police killing of Oscar Grant in their hometown of Oakland 10 years ago (Depicted in Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station). Blindspotting follows Collin (Diggs) and Miles (Casal) over the last three days of Collin’s probation, when he witnesses a police officer fatally shoot an unarmed black man. While heavy handed at times, Blindspotting retains a funny and genuine personal touch while offering a fresh perspective on dealing with the fallout from gentrification, based on personal identity and outward perception.

The opening sequence previews the tensions pulling at Collin and Miles through the story. Set to the operatic first act of La Traviata, a split screen montage catches the viewer up on everything happening in Oakland. We see old housing being knocked down and the new ones being built in their place. We see the tent camps containing an ever-growing number of homeless people as that affordable housing disappears. We see the local market and the new Whole Foods on the block. We see children breakdancing and playing double dutch and hipsters taking selfies and slack-lining. One of the clearest examples of a disappearing Oakland comes next with the Raiders and Warriors, born-and-bred Oakland franchises leaving to chase better prospects in other cities. We also get a look at the local nightlife, including people fighting on the BART (The Bay’s public transportation system), doing donuts in cars at a sideshow, throwing block parties, and yes; a whole lot of police.

There is no shortage of fuel feeding the conversation around police misconduct, specifically violence against innocent black people. Since Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi created Black Lives Matter in 2013, police brutality has moved to the forefront as a national topic of fierce debate. A Pew research study last year found that #BlackLivesMatter has been used almost 30 million times since; it was only a matter of time until that sentiment expressed itself in film. To be clear, these issues and their artistic reflections aren’t new; Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing turns 30 this summer and still rings true on a number of similar topics. However, we saw the current political moment really hit Hollywood this past year, with films like The Hate U Give, Monsters And Men, and Widows featuring police shooting unarmed black men. In Blindspotting, the shooting isn’t the source of an action-packed protest narrative like in other films. In fact, nothing of consequence really happens. When Collin brings up what he’d witnessed that night, Miles asks a few questions and references an incident from the real world. “Not like they shot him 14 times like that motherfucker out in Milwaukee. What was that dudes name? What was his name though?” (His name was Dontre Hamilton. I had forgotten as well.) Blindspotting comes to terms with the unfortunate fact that, as of now, society at large simply doesn’t register the rotating names and hashtags constantly generated by these incidents. Instead, it looks towards how these events affect individual people like Collin and Miles.

Diggs and Casal both rap, and Blindspotting’s soundtrack takes form as 3 separate EP’s from the pens of Collin and Miles. 36 of the 40 drops in the film feature Bay Area artists from Chippass to Tower of Power to E-40. Besides just paying homage to the strong hip hop roots of Oakland, the dialogue in Blindspotting is often written in verse. This allows for another medium of expression, where it might be harder for guys like Miles and Collin to convey their thoughts and feelings otherwise. This precedent is set early on, where in four rhymes we learn that Collin has three days left on his probation and the two of them drive a truck for a moving company. Their job takes them all across Oakland, and in the process rubs their noses in the conversion of their town. In one scene, they are tasked with clearing out one of the last vacant homes in a gentrified neighborhood, presumably for a rich white family to move into. “Cleaning up after the dead. Broken TV’s, paint cans full of lead. Turned the projects into prospects.”, Collin solemnly states as he looks through a dusty photo album of the black family that used to live there. “In my mind I’m a scarecrow. Hung up in my hood till I’m discarded. Don’t know who I’m spookin’ I’m the one who’s spookin’ hardest. Probably ‘cause I know that I’m just here to help the harvest. After that I’m a target”.

Despite having grown up in the same place and been best friends since childhood, Collin and Miles have a very different experience in society. Collin is black, and Miles is white. Blindspotting doesn’t set up the standard dichotomy that we see in most films discussing race. Instead, Diggs, Casal, and their diverse cast portray the struggles of both black people and non-black people handling the weight of gentrification in their hometown, and how that struggle applies differently to each. Miles is undeniably a hothead. He’s funny, loyal, and charismatic, but also loud, angry, and prone to violence. He yells at the corner store clerk for stocking green juice. He curses out a hipster for blocking in their truck. In the opening scene we see him buy a gun and try to fight a fast food employee for giving him a vegan burger. By all accounts, Miles seems to be the most angry about the changes taking place in Oakland, while Collin is just trying to keep his head down and get off probation. This tension reaches a climax at a Pandora party they’re invited to by one of their friends. From the moment they walk in, it’s clear that Miles is winding up. The host, a tech bro that just moved in from Portland, got the same Oakland tattoo Miles has. A common trait of gentrifiers, to adopt the cultural labels of a space while pushing out the people who created them. He has Oakland flags around his house, is playing some Chainsmoker-type EDM remix, and catered vegan burgers (Miles’ Kryptonite, apparently). Miles is loudly complaining when a black stranger, clearly sick of the appropriative posturing of the other white partygoers, calls him out for his tattoos, grill, and accent. “You know you don’t have to act ghetto to hang out here. Welcome to Oakland.” Miles responds by shoving him to the ground and they get into a nasty brawl as Collin watches, conflicted, on the sideline. When the host yells at Miles to get out, he pulls his gun and starts firing in the air. “Y’all get the fuck out of here! Oh yeah y’all love Oakland now huh!?” Collin hustles Miles out of there, and they confront each other in a nearby alley. Miles is furious that Collin didn’t back him up; Collin doesn’t understand why Miles has to prove his identity to everybody so ferociously. “That’s ‘cause I’m living somewhere where now everybody got me fucked up! You ain’t gotta do shit! You’re a big, black dude with fuckin’ braids in Oakland! Nobody is misreading you, Collin.” Miles’ identity crisis is real; how do you move in a space where the enemy accepts you and believes you are one of them? How do you represent your cultural background when its markings are now appropriated by outsiders? Miles has to fight every day for people to simply accept him as the “West Oakland homegrown Bay boy bout his town business” that he is. People know exactly who Collin is when they see him walking down the street. But… do they? “You out here acting an ass like it ain’t no fucking consequences for that shit. And every n-a who sees me thinks that I do the same dumb, fuckin’ ignorant, gun-carrying shit that you do!” Collin is trying to take a different path for himself. He doesn’t want to be stuck as an ex-felon driving a truck for the rest of his life. While his Oakland reputation walking down the street may be safe, as a black man he can’t do half of the things that Miles can with his privilege. When they got into a bar fight (In a flashback scene hilariously narrated by Utkarsh Ambudkar), Miles went home. Collin went to prison. On the way back from this party, a beat up and bloodied Miles gets back safely, while Collin gets stopped by the police for just walking down the street. Miles is being accepted into the “New Oakland”, however reluctant he is to join; Collin is being crushed by it.

 One of the concerns in making a film about societal inequality and racism is that there isn’t a neat conclusion to the story. There isn’t a monster that can be slain, or a princess saved from a castle. America was built on inequality, and the idea that a movie can resolve that level of structural damage and pain in 90 minutes is absurd. Blindspotting’s suggestion is simple, but heartfelt. Early on in the movie, Collin and Miles are sent to help a photographer move out of his studio. His last exhibit showcased oak trees superimposed over the neighborhoods they were cut down to make space for. “They used to be everywhere. Now they’re just on the damn street signs.” His current exhibit connects the past as a metaphor for the present, with close up portraits of people who were forced out of Oakland looking directly into the camera. He asks Collin and Miles to stand in front of each other and stare into each other’s eyes. “This is about finding your soul. Look deep. Connect. Understand.” Blindspotting’s cinematography preaches this message throughout the film, with an array of close-up shots where characters stare directly into the camera at the viewer. There is no better way to understand the nature and humanity of a person than by looking them right in the eyes, no dialogue that can contain that multitude of expression. That concept applies to Oakland at large. As they’re leaving the studio, there’s a hipster blocking the truck in, and he completely ignores Collin asking nicely, and then Miles honking and shouting at him as he unloads his car. Gentrification is a cancer because it is so detached. There shouldn’t be anything wrong with revitalizing a lower income part of town; the problem is that there’s no connection between the assistance and the people that live there. “New Oakland”, while physically in the same place, is completely separated from the original city and is indifferently bleeding it to death. It’s not just the hipsters. As Miles tells Colin, “OPD don’t even hire in the town. So the person that pulls you over is actually from, like, Cupertino or some shit.” This is an all too common occurrence in urban communities. Nine out of ten Oakland police officers live outside of the city in majority white suburbs. Blindspotting addresses this in its penultimate scene, when Collin and Miles are sent to move a family out of their suburban house. Colin goes in alone to finish up, and finds the cop he saw shoot that innocent man standing in the garage. Miles catches wind and runs into the room to find Collin holding the cowering officer at gunpoint, where he delivers a long, passionate spoken word case for his humanity.

“Hello sir! I’mma need you to open your fucking eyes now and look. And see. You might think you know whats happening but you don’t feel it like we do. To feel it, it has to be you.”

“… Ain’t too hard to figure that you probably never really felt the pressure of a n-a but you know what? I ain’t never felt the pressures of a trigger! The difference between me and you is… I ain’t no killer.”

That’s the case for “blindspotting”, the term Val (Janina Gavankar) invents that describes this reality. We do not live in a monotone world. Oakland is a great example, as it consistently places as one of the most diverse cities in America. Unfortunately, “diversity” simply isn’t enough, as Oakland is also one of the most segregated places in the Bay Area. We will never feel exactly what it feels like to be someone of another identity. Even within marginalized communities there are so many different characteristics that make up who we are. The closest we can get is to look deep, connect, and understand. It won’t solve systemic inequality. It won’t stop police shootings. But recognizing our blind spots is the first step to seeing ourselves and each other as the people we truly are.