Shaka King

(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.