JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH
(directed by Shaka King, 2020)
**** (out of 5)
.
> This excellent biopic of the social justice orator Fred Hampton packs a wallop- as it should, with a story like his.
. It’s a true tale of bold advocacy for social progress, corruption and betrayal- and a tale of government sanctioned murder, with subsequent justice long delayed- in every sense a tragedy.
. It is the late sixties in Chicago, and America roils with racial tension. The militant Black Panther Party is on the rise and scaring the bejezus out of the old, white, flat-topped guys at the F.B.I. Martin Sheen as unctuous priss Edgar Hoover, decides that what they really need is an inside man, setting agent Jesse Plemons on the task. Good thing he knows a Black man who is vulnerable to blackmail. Dangling a welcome plea deal just out of reach for petty criminal William O’Neil (LaKeith Stanfield), he is persuaded to infiltrate the Illinois chapter of the group. His assignment: gather all the dirt he can on charismatic Panther spokesperson Fred Hampton (Oscar winner Daniel Kaluuya), as a trusted traitor in their midst.
. Nominated for 6 Academy Awards, this was by any measure one of the best films of the year. The cast is great and the script cackles with electricity. If oppressed peoples of the time thought Fred Hampton was the Black messiah, the man who ruined his own life by enabling his murder is appropriately likened to the Bible’s Judas. And like the tortured Biblical figure, this Judas could not live with his betrayal, dying shortly thereafter by his own hand.
– JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH is not the definitive film about the Black Panthers, but a fascinating drama in its own right.
*
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