Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) – S. King

A history lesson masquerading as a bio-pic masquerading as a political thriller, Shaka King teaches us about the Black Panthers’ role in the civil rights movement via the short incendiary life of Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) and the car thief (LaKeith Stanfield) blackmailed by the feds into betraying him. (Thus, that title is a bit too “on the nose”). Not being as familiar as I should be with these events, I found the plot turns hard to predict (a good thing) and the re-creation of late ‘60s Chicago felt about right. Although Kaluuya is persuasive as Hampton (a community-focused collaborative leader calling for revolution), the real center of the film sits with Stanfield who needed to portray the guilt and fear that Bill O’Neal must have felt as he became more and more entrenched in the Panthers’ hierarchy even while he was meeting regularly with his handler (Jesse Plemons) who himself seems sometimes more sympathetic to the movement than to his nefarious bosses, including J. Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen). Real footage of O’Neal and Hampton and Hampton’s girlfriend Deborah Johnson bring home the reality of the events – knowing that she sued the federal government for his murder and won means this story can’t be brooked. Of course, there’s a reason this film appeared now, as the number of Black Americans dying at the hands of the police has not decreased and a revolution may be all that turns the tide. Black lives (and stories) matter indeed.