Note: The writer of this review has looked Judas and the Black Messiah on a digital screener from home. Before you decide to see it – or any other movie – in a movie theater, consider the health risks. Here is an interview on the matter with scientific experts.
It’s hard to exaggerate the cultural turmoil of the late 1960s. Americans got a taste of the political chaos of the era in 2020, but for many, that experience was mitigated by the dissociative effect of watching life on a smartphone screen. And the events are still taking place anyway. The turmoil of the 1960s was ongoing, organized and direct, and groups like the Black Panthers, with their commitment to solidarity and mutual aid, posed a tangible threat to white supremacy in this country – to white supremacy, in the form of the De FBI ended the revolution before it could actually begin.
In terms of telling this story, Judas and the Black Messiah is relatively easy. It is framed by a character’s familiar interviewing device, and anchored by that most quintessentially human experience: a love story. Director Shaka King has a new approach to the material, focusing less on the relationship between the two title characters and more on what was going on in Chicago around the time FBI informant William O’Neill (LaKeith Stanfield) made the Illinois Black Panther Party infiltrated in 1968. Anyone hoping for a climactic showdown between the film’s thrilling protagonists won’t find it here, because it hasn’t happened in real life. But there is still a lot of dramatic friction to be found.
As Illinois party chairman Fred Hampton, Daniel Kaluuya is the sun that surrounds everything else Judas and the Black Messiah turns. Hampton recruits new members, unites warring factions, and with his charisma and radical platform scares the bejesus of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen). The activist really comes to life in front of a crowd as Kaluuya channels the blistering intensity he brought to Steve McQueen Widows to more righteous but equally exciting purposes. But even offstage, the tough Hampton rarely abandons his vigilance, which is what makes his bond with lover and brother-in-arms Deborah (Dominique Fishback) so special. She knows how to get through to him as he reaches an audience, and Fishback’s telltale gentleness balances Kaluuya’s unwavering power with a moving effect.
Compared to Hampton, O’Neill is a rat running through a flaming maze, desperate, fearful, and eternally reactive. Stanfield’s performance is also evasive. On the one hand, Bill is a skilled liar who manages to make his way into Hampton’s inner circle without breaking his character. On the other hand, he is squirrely, irritable and unable to hide his emotions when put under great pressure. But while Stanfield and Kaluuya offer two captivating – and contrasting – performances, Judas and the Black Messiah is an ensemble piece with no weak links, only secret weapons.
The opposite physicality of the leads in the film is just one way that King shows instead of telling. At one point, a cut from O’Neill’s dark, cramped room to the luxurious suburban digs of his FBI handler, Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons), shows their imbalance in power without a line of dialogue. (Plemons is a casting coup in a movie full of them, a perfect milquetoast representation of the true face of white supremacy.) Just like Mitchell did with O’Neill, information is withheld from the characters and distributed in fragments throughout. And as the tension builds, so does the impression that a trap is being built and placed somewhere just out of sight. It’s an elegant and subtle dramatization of institutional racism and how it works.
King also shows a talent for juxtaposition in his transitions between scenes, using them to underline points and add small moments of ironic humor to this otherwise serious story. (At the outset, we see archive footage of Hampton talking about free breakfast for kids, before Hoover dramatically states, “The Black Panthers are the greatest threat to our national security. “Free breakfast! The horror!) His confident direction keeps the camera moving, and composers Craig Harris and Mark Isham’s free jazz scores both fit the period, adding more nervous energy to Chicago’s already explosive atmosphere. The Windy City shown in this movie is not one of skyscrapers and expansive waterfront, but of modest brick dwellings, dingy alleys and industrial estates blowing toxic smoke into the air inhaled by children who lived a stone’s throw away.
Both Hampton’s son, Fred Hampton Jr., and his mother, Deborah Johnson (who later changed her name to Akua Njeri), worked as advisers to Judas and the Black Messiah, and the film is certainly an admiring portrait of the Black Panthers. But King and co-screenwriters Will Berson and Keith and Kenneth Lucas (aka comedy duo The Lucas Brothers) add layers to this already complicated story, leaving O’Neill just a little bit of sympathy (he’s also in a snare .) and caused Mitchell to conflict over his role in Hampton’s eventual murder. Both the militant and humanitarian side of the Panthers can be seen here, and as the Chicago Police Department is portrayed in a mean light, history also confirms this. The fact that 50 years later this movie feels exciting and relevant actually says about how good Fred is Hampton was. You can kill a person, but you cannot kill an idea.