Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America

Ornstein's film can contain these multitudes: it can follow the moving results of Davis's dialogue-based actions while also addressing its many very real limitations. It's a touching, troubling film. And it has extra relevance in these hate-filled times.

Davis' insistence on shaking hands and showing respect - the opposite of the behavior you see on Twitter - patiently chips away at the KKK's preconceptions about race.

He tells his audience, "Always keep the lines of communication with your antagonist open," because "if you're talking, you're not fighting."

The film is a debater with some interesting points to make but no overall argument to contain them.

The glimpses we get of these friendly encounters are mostly unilluminating beyond their novelty, underscoring the truth that some of these guys are more isolated, fearful, and clueless than truly gripped by hate.

To a surprising degree, Davis has managed to make a few personal inroads into the white nationalist swamp.

It's an uncomfortable and frustrating yet important reminder that systems and institutions have left a far reaching historical, emotional, and psychological stain that the path to deconstruction is not an easy or quick one.

Engaging, if generic in its approach. And it raises issues that surely demand deeper explanation.

Its very thought-provoking, timely content and compelling subject compensate for its deficiencies.

Friending The Klan - warts and all. An unusually honest, simultaneously puzzling and provocative mission-fueled bromance of a somewhat itinerant one man political psychotherapist, determined to disarm racists. Or at least one white supremacist at a time.