Daniel Kaluuya

  • Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) There’s been, in keeping with the times, quite a subgenre of 1960s-activism movies latterly — many of them Oscar-nominated. A recurrent theme of this latest crop has been a hard look at the efforts of the United States government in sabotaging civil rights activism. Judas and the Black Messiah is even more caustic in depicting systemic racism within American law enforcement, escalating to murder in a way that will feel eerily familiar to twenty-first century viewers. One of the film’s strengths, as it presents the twin stories of Black Panther activist Fred Hampton and small-time crook turned FBI informer William O’Neal, is to present a convincing picture of what it was like to be involved with the Black Panthers at the time, in-between aggressive rhetoric and the toll taken by opposing the system. The real-life story dramatized here has a quasi-operatic tragic grandeur of betrayal and guilt — the real-life death of O’Neil providing a sobering coda to the film. While the script and direction of the film are both really good (some great work by Shaka King on both counts), the film’s biggest assets remain the acting talent assembled for the occasion. Daniel Kaluuya is incandescent as Hampton — playing a revolutionary with a flair for rhetoric takes panache, and you can see how Kaluuya ended up with an Oscar. Still, there’s also quite a lot in the ensemble cast: Lakeith Stanfield has a more subtle but not less difficult role as the reluctant informant; Jesse Plemons is his usual unbearable self as an FBI agent; Dominique Fishback is compelling whenever she’s on-screen; and there’s some irony in having Martin Sheen play J. Edgar Hoover. Comparisons with other recent films, such as The Trial of the Chicago 7, The United States vs. Billie Holliday and BlacKKKlansman, are inevitable, not unwarranted but not necessarily to Judas and the Black Messiah’s detriment — it has style, theme and narrative difference enough to distinguish itself, and some striking acting to appreciate on its own.

  • Get Out (2017)

    Get Out (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2017) Life is made of strange coincidences. So it is that I sat down to watch Get Out as the results of the US Senate Special Alabama election of 2017 were coming in, an election that offered as clear cut a choice between a typical candidate and a far-right activist with documented episodes of racism, sexism and pedophilia. A fitting backdrop to Get Out, which is a daring take on race relations by way of comic horror. While the starting point of the film may seem familiar—a young white woman takes her new black boyfriend home to meet her parents—the film quickly takes a turn for the bizarre and then the terrifying as the protagonist realizes that he’s in grave danger. To tell more about the premise is irresistible, as it encapsulates the nature of racial relations at a time when it’s not polite to be racist. To my dismay, I could recognize a bit of my own tics in the oh-so-subtle racism expressed by upper-class whites toward our protagonist. The horror elements get more and more intense as the film goes on, although they are partially defused by a comic subplot that seems to belong in another film. Daniel Kaluuya is good as the hero, but Catherine Keener and Allison Williams are far more interesting in their insidiousness. Writer/director Jordan Peele has some notoriety in comedy as part of the Key & Peele duo, but his eye and attention for detail as a filmmaker is terrific—Get Out has a pleasant amount of depth and craft in its details, with a script in which most lines (including the titular quote) have more than one meaning. It’s solid filmmaking and I was quite taken by the result despite taking in my own lumps as a left-leaning well-meaning kind-of-oblivious white guy. I suspect that my just-shy-of-enthusiasm reaction may have been helped along by the real-world events unfolding via my telephone screen as I watched the movie. As all hope seemed lost for our protagonist on-screen, electoral results suggested a comfortable lead for the worst candidate. But as the movie wrapped to a close and fortunes shifted for our protagonist, so did the electoral results, with the better candidate taking a comfortable lead right before the credits started rolling. The ongoing discussion about racism may take the form of an entertaining movie or a statewide election, but it needs to take place. Sometimes, the stars even align and you get both a great movie and an election result that feels like progress at the same time.