Review: The Best of Enemies

Much like last year's problematic, Oscar-winning Green Book, The Best of Enemies is based on a little-known, unlikely yet true friendship, in this case that of civil rights organiser Ann Atwater and KKK president C.P. Ellis, who worked together to bring about school integration in Durham, North Carolina.

Set in 1971, the film begins with Ann (Taraji P. Henson) living up to her nickname of "Roughhouse Annie" by berating and then thwacking a councilman in the head with a telephone receiver when he dismisses a single black mother for complaining about the plumbing in her apartment. From the jump, it's clear that Ann is fierce, ferocious, not to be messed with, and the kind to never take no for an answer. Meanwhile, C.P. (Sam Rockwell) is shown welcoming a new recruit into the KKK's youth core. "We're an endangered species," he says, and their rights, freedoms and way of life need protecting, a sentiment troublingly relevant in these Trump-led times. Later, he and two of his cohorts will shoot up a house of a white woman because she's rumoured to be dating a black man. Yet, despite being a willing participant in such intimidation tactics, it's also evident that C.P. is not wholly irredeemable.

After an electrical fire damages the black elementary school, raising the issue of school integration, Ann and C.P. are reluctantly enlisted to co-chair the "charrette," a 10-day series of community meetings to decide on the issue organised by Bill Riddick (Babou Ceesay), an urbane and even-keeled black man from Raleigh who has already run charrettes in various places. They aren't legal meetings per se but, as the city notes, the only way for them to have a win on this is to put on the charade of allowing the community to come to a resolution and the council to abide by it and "enact the will of the people." Though scenes of the charrette are kept to a minimum, the time spent on them is effectively spent as the black committee members attempt to find common ground with the white members, and Riddick does his best to keep both sides talking.

There are many powerful moments such as when Ann reprimands a group of young black men who destroy Klan material being displayed in the hallway, a display Riddick had allowed in exchange for the black townspeople ending each charrette with gospel songs). Staring at the white hood she's put back on the mannequin's head, Henson expertly demonstrates how Ann is both unnerved and fired up by the ghoulish scene. There's no arguing that Henson plays the hell out of Ann Atwater, but there is also no overlooking the fact that Ann doesn't have as many dimensions to explore as C.P., who can be seen as a comparatively more mellow version of the racist that Rockwell portrayed to Oscar-winning effect in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. As a result, though it very much celebrates the bond between Ann and C.P., The Best of Enemies ultimately becomes more his story than theirs.

The Best of Enemies

Directed by: Robin Bissell

Written by: Robin Bissell; adapted from the book The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South by Osha Gray Davidson

Starring: Taraji P. Henson, Sam Rockwell, Babou Ceesay, Nick Searcy, Wes Bentley, Bruce McGill, Anne Heche, John Gallagher Jr., Nicholas Logan, Gilbert Glenn Brown, Caitlin Mehner, Dolan Wilson