Judas and the Black Messiah is not a particularly easy watch. At the beginning I felt the lack of knowledge and context. I was aware that the Black Panthers were a terrorist organization from the late 60’s in the US, that branches of the government were very much against them and that the Panthers had some sympathy from certain well-known figures. I guess I bought the government whitewash.
What new director Shaka King does with this film is take one significant episode in the history of the Panthers, the murder of one of their charismatic leaders, Fred Hampton, in 1969. To do this, we get context. Hampton is a very young firebrand leader of the Chicago chapter. The FBI and the Chicago police are after him so they plant a spy inside the organising committee, a young car thief called Bill O’Neal.
He quickly proves his use as driver and handyman and becomes a sort of right-hand man to Hampton, all the while reporting back to Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons)
leading the FBI charge on behalf of its evil leader J Edgar Hoover (a garishly made-up Martin Sheen).
As the months pass we see the other side of the Black Panther, community kitchens and educational projects not just for blacks but for all the underprivileged.
Imagine the FBI´s distaste of Hampton creating a rainbow coalition of disaffected white people and farming communities. And we see Hampton’s romance with fellow comrade Deborah Johnson (excellent Dominique Fishback), which ends up in their having a baby born after Hampton’s death.
Perhaps I found the first half or so a little heavy as we set all this up, despite the excellent scenes of Hampton’s oratory.
But once we head into the final straight where Hampton’s demise is imminent the pace picks up and moments of poignancy and outrage invade the screen. Certainly, the state acted in ‘overkill’ and in the raid leading to the death of two of the Panthers, 99 shots are fired by police and agents and 1 by the “terrorists”. As someone said, the State (yet again) are the real terrorists here and while some compensation was granted in a court case ten years later, the state was never really held accountable for this excess. The Panthers are no saints either, young, idealistic but hell-bent on revolution. And yet you ask yourself why governments sometimes go to such lengths and such illegalities (covered up in lies afterwards) in actions which are basically no more than the murder of fellow citizens.
The nuances are increased in this film with the central role of O’Neal as the infiltrator and traitor – the Judas – who gets trapped into betraying a cause that he starts to realise he actually supports. Or so it seems. The confusion, contradictions, fears and naivety of O’Neal are superbly captured by LaKeith Stanfield in a performance of considerable subtlety.
He deserves more nominations for awards than he has got. The problem is that Daniel Kaluuya as Hampton is SO magnetic that Stanfield has to work hard on us to earn our attention.
Both are performances sure to be among the best by year’s end. And while King still has things to learn about storytelling, this film is a very solid debut and will be watched and studied plenty in the future. With a Best Song nominee by H.E.R. what more could you want?
Good movie, an important contribution to the current revision of the treatment of blacks in the US. Surely, the George Floyd movie will follow in a few short years.
4 stars
passionfilm 