Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)

 Score: 5 / 5

What a great movie to watch during Lent. In this riveting, incendiary film, we follow Judas through his fall from grace, his seduction by money and power, and his torment as he prepares to betray his savior. But this particular story takes place roughly nineteen hundred years after Iscariot handed the radical Jesus over to the Romans. This Judas is, rather, William O'Neal, the infamous FBI informant whose work in the late 60s directly led to the murder of revolutionary Fred Hampton in Chicago. And while the film features both men in nearly equal capacity, there is a clear narrative and thematic focus on O'Neal, much as in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar. The story will be tragic, and will force us to face our own demons, much as Judas did unsuccessfully.

With the immeasurable help of its two leading men, Judas and the Black Messiah takes us on a tour de force of acting, of history, of production design, and of course, of allegory. LaKeith Stanfield, one of the most talented young actors working right now, is mesmerizing as the tormented Bill O'Neal. Carrying the heaviest weight of the drama, he internalizes everything around him; some of the film's most unforgiving scenes are between him and the white men using him for their own ends. When his FBI handler ingratiates O'Neal, he does so by an unusual form of intimidation; this isn't Detroit, but something more akin to Othello. In one of the more chilling scenes, a visibly uncomfortable O'Neal is invited to the home of his handler, played by Jesse Plemons, who tells him to make himself at home and offers him "the good stuff" from his bar cart. It's a noticeably underwritten scene, one that shivers with anxiety and dread as the white hospitality is a little too thick. And while, over the course of the film, Stanfield could be written off as being one-note in his performance (due, I think, to the screenplay's determination to not give him many truly dynamic moments), I found his nuanced shifts endlessly fascinating, his ability to absorb everything around him and then internalize and deal with it a masterclass in acting.

On the other hand, Daniel Kaluuya as Fred Hampton is equally brilliant in a role that will be more appreciated and more praised. The screenplay definitely gives him ample time to show off his skill set, and Kaluuya has never been better. Several scenes allow him to raise his voice in front of his audiences, not so much performing as he is channeling the kinds of speeches that made his character famous in Chicago and beyond. He looks a bit like Hampton but he sounds exactly like Hampton, commanding every space through the immense, operatic power of his voice and his vibrant, revolutionary ideas. Though, historically, I only really knew about Hampton's untimely death, this movie reminds us that his life was truly incredible, short as it was. At his most electrifying, and in the film's fraught midsection, Hampton goes to Hispanic and white supremacist group meetings to build bridges and found the Rainbow Coalition.

It's a brilliant move to remind us of his most radical and beautiful legacy, but it's also a devastatingly timely observation to make. In an age when even being Facebook friends with bigots can be damning, to say nothing of decades-old social media posts, we've turned identity politics into something not unlike a social pandemic, a means to isolate ourselves further from the sizable communities that could work together for change. But Hampton, in identifying capitalism as the root of all injustice in America, succeeded in teaming up with significant (and significantly different) organizations to demonstrate against their collective oppression. More importantly, none of the parties lost dignity or compromised their beliefs to do so. In only a few brief scenes, the movie reflects on the current state of social movements and politics and finds us sorely lacking.

Of course, it is exactly this kind of firebrand revolution that terrified J. Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen is deeply disturbing in his two or three scenes), whose covert COINTELPRO is put under direct scrutiny here. Coining Hampton the "Black Messiah," the FBI sought to systematically discredit him before removing him from the game board entirely. Obviously they needed an inside man to do this, and so caught O'Neal red-handed on his desperate thievery spree and used his need to survive against him. Grooming him as an ideal new member of the Black Panther party, they had him get close to Hampton and relay private information back to the FBI, including the layout of Hampton's apartment. It was this that ultimately led to Hampton's murder, in an assassination staged as a raid exactly twenty months after the assassination of the previous Black Messiah, MLK. 

Sean Bobbitt's beautiful and harrowing cinematography effectively pulls us into both the historical world and the fraught psychological landscape of this movie. And Dominique Fishback, who plays Hampton's girlfriend, magnetically pulls us along on a tightrope between strength and sass, heightening the tragedy we know will ultimately happen. Her final scene, haunting and brutal, will hopefully bring her more starring work soon. Writer and director Shaka King, who I wish had provided a little more depth to his Judas, has suddenly made a huge name for himself, and we can all pray he will keep up this momentum. This movie is just amazing, guys. Go see it, go see it again with a friend, purchase it when you can, and share it with everyone. It's already in my top 10 of 2021.