“I’m free.”
The first great movie of 2021 folks!
Out of all the ‘Civil Rights Movement’ movies I’ve seen over the years, I honestly believe that this might be the best one. Without falling into any traditional biopics tropes that could easily dramatize its history. It instead focuses on a story about fear, violence, betrayal, and loyalty. It is heavily empathize from different perspectives; it’s the reason why it was more effective.
In the movie, whenever someone gets shot, beaten, or just hurt, you feel it. The sound work, directing, and the performers manage to make it believable. Very brutal and realistic. However, what surprised me the most is how suspenseful the movie was at times, with the payoff either being soul crushing or shocking.
All thanks to Shaka King’s directing and Sean Bobbitt’s cinematography that manages to capture the most difficult times in American history, but also capturing the feeling of that time, or what it must have felt like.
Daniel Kaluuya, what a beast of an actor that keeps growing momentum over the years. Powerful and natural, he really is one of the best working actors of today. Not only did he capture the accent but nailed down the overall feeling of the charismatic activist Fred Hampton.
LaKeith Stanfield, a fantastic character actor that pops up everywhere and fully commits to every role he plays. In this movie, he delivers a fantastic performance and he continues to surprise and amaze me. Perfectly casted as well, him playing Bill O'Neal, the tense and sleek FBI informant who infiltrates the Black Panther Party and keeps tabs on their charismatic leader. Stanfield himself already has that intense look in real life, which best suits him for this type of role.
Martin Sheen and Jesse Plemons were also fantastic in their supporting roles. Dominique Fishback also deserves a mention here because I thought she was brilliant as Deborah Johnson, the woman who falls in love with Fred Hampton. There’s one particular scene in this movie, without her uttering a single word, absolutely killed it and made the scene itself more devastating. I’m keeping it vague because it will be spoiling things and we don't want that, do we? Watch the movie and see for yourself.
I found the overall experience devastating, and yet, a hopeful one as well, as there was little glimpses of light, because despite there being so much hate in this world, both past and present, you cannot destroy a revolution.
Overall rating: People say that ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ kept their interest throughout, but for me it didn’t, as I thought there had to be a more interesting movie to be made around the Black Panther Movement. Well, everyone, here it is.
Summary
Judas and the Black Messiah" is a truly remarkable biopic that manages to be both a captivating historical drama and an incredibly inspirational story. The film delves into the lives of Fred Hampton, a charismatic leader of the Black Panther Party, and the FBI informant, William O'Neal, who infiltrates the organization.
Review
One of the standout aspects of this movie is its incredible character play and depiction of real-life characters. Daniel Kaluuya's portrayal of Fred Hampton is no less than extraordinary. He captures Hampton's charisma and passion, making you feel the truth of his leadership. Equally impressive is Lakeith Stanfield's portrayal of William O'Neal, conveying the internal struggle and moral complexity of his character. The film masterfully explores the themes of morale, affiliation, and the power of collective action. It serves as a strong reminder of the sacrifices made by those who fought for civil rights and social justice. Another remarkable trait of this movie is its ability to inspire, which it manages by showcasing the resilience and unrelenting commitment of historical figures like Fred Hampton, who dedicated their lives to a greater cause. Judas and the Black Messiah is not just a biopic though, it's a thought-provoking, emotional thriller that leaves a lasting impact. It sheds light on a major chapter in American history and serves as a testament to the endurance of those who stood up for their rights and what they believed in.
Rating
8.5/10
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2021-03-07T05:24:51Z
[8.3/10] I took the title of Judas and the Black Messiah to be fanciful, something eye-catching and poetic that represents some of the larger themes of the film in a more lyrical way. But it’s more literal than I had imagined.
Fred Hampton, the charismatic and forward-thinking chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther party, is painted as nothing short of a messianic figure. He is preternaturally kind and decent. Despite his revolutionary fervor, he shows mercy and relents from violence. He speaks of the inequities of the system, the injustice inherent in it. He casts off divisions in the name of recognizing common grievances and collective solutions. He is, in short, too good for this world, a beacon of light where it’s needed most.
And William O’Neal is nothing short of his betrayer. Rising through the ranks of the Black Panthers to become the Illinois chapter’s security captain, while informing to the FBI in exchange for his pieces of silver, O’Neal is the film’s passenger protagonist but also its villain. It makes him human, struggling with self-doubt and regret, but also venal, willing to set aside his principles and sell out his friends and the movement, to protect his own hide and feather his own nest. He dines at Fred Hampton’s last supper, having laid the ground for what happens next.
The FBI, then, are the Romans in the story, the ruling body afraid of what this humble but powerful man preaches, and so conspires to kill him, lest his ideas and influence spread. There is no nuance to the feds in Judas. They are an evil collective, laughing at the pamphlets they write to sow discord, seeming plainly undisturbed at their informants committing terrible acts, and casually plot to take down those agitating for liberation in cold blood.
The film zeroes in on the irony of Special Agent Mitchell’s protestations to O’Neal -- that the Black Panthers and the Klu Klux Klan are two sides of the same coin, equally brutal in their methods and both solely interested in fostering hate and destabilizing the country. It is, instead, the cruelty of the organization he works for that’s put on display, the despicable methods that mark the movie’s vision of the FBI as the cause of the anger and barbarism they claim to be trying to fight.
That’s the one place of nuance Judas offers. Initially, Agent Mitchell (played with a banal, homespun malevolence by Jesse Plemons) seems like the decent guy, the sop to audiences who will recognize the rot in his organization’s bunker. Instead, his arc is the reverse, to seem empathetic and on the side of right in the beginning, but to ultimately reveal himself as no less cruel or prejudiced or capable of committing atrocities when racial equality is not presented as an abstraction, but as something that could affect his family. Not for nothing, there’s a good piece to be written about the difference between this approach and the one taken by fellow Oscar contender The Trial of the Chicago 7 toward a similarly-positioned character.
With that backdrop, the movie succeeds both on the framing and on the strength of its performances. Daniel Kaluuya cuts an impressive figure as Hampton, able to turn on those moment of power where his words and presence need to stir the soul, while also being able to tone down the man in softer times to show his sense of being a philosopher, a harmonizer, someone who defuses situations when needed instead of igniting them. But he also embodies Hampton away from his revolutionary fervor, in moving personal moments where he canoodles with his wife or exudes camaraderie with his brothers-in-arms, as friends, not just compatriots in the same struggles.
At the same time, Lakeith Stanfield is a live wire as O’Neal. He carries the internal buzz of a man who’s believing the messages he hears expressed so thunderingly from the man he’s been sent to spy on, while also being desperately afraid that he’ll be found out and punished for his betrayal, in vicious terms. He’s not a one note scoundrel, but rather the opposite of Fred, someone who cares more about saving himself than about saving the people.
That’s the core of Hampton’s nigh-divine decency here, and the film’s secondary theme -- that where there are people, there is power, and that protecting them, educating them, empowering them, is more important than preserving any one life, even his.
We see it in Fred’s rejection of the money meant to grant him escape from an impending prison sentence on trumped on charges, earmarking instead to build a clinic to honor the memory of his dead comrade and trumpet what he stood for. We see it in the way that what really makes the FBI nervous is how Hampton unites different factions and groups under a common cause of the oppressed, one that cuts across race. And we see it, most movingly, in the way that the bombing of the Panthers’ headquarters by the police is met with an outpour of support and help from across the community, a sign that what starts with the people cannot be stopped or suppressed even by the most incendiary rebukes from those in power.
These moments of hope come with a certain dreadful dramatic irony to anyone who walks into the movie knowing where Fred Hampton’s story ends. It makes the scenes where O’Neal comes so close to being found out that much more harrowing, knowing that it could have prevented this fate. It makes the poem from Deborah Johnson, Hampton’s partner and the mother of his child, all the more poignant when she voices the sentiment of the costs extracted of this war, and considers the different kinds of revolutionary acts further away from such mortal peril. And it makes Fred’s last night something mournful and almost holy, the last words, the last bond, of a prophetic figure before his fated end.
In that, Judas and the Black Messiah presents something spiritual, biblical in its atmosphere and the lens through which it views these grisly events. There are the brutal overlords, heedlessly cutting down those who would challenge their established order. There is the self-preserving turncoat, pained by his actions but unwilling or unable to make a different choice. And there is the man himself, near-deified in death, speaking his truth and imparting his message to the people, in the hopes both would outlive him, and the knowledge that they would almost certainly have to.