Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) Review

rating: ****

the story: Black Panthers organizer Fred Hampton becomes the target of the FBI.

review: The big draw, for me, is watching Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out) and LaKeith Stanfield. I assumed Stanfield, who has showed up in a number of interesting projects in recent years, was going to be my favorite of the two, but it’s actually Kaluuya who lights up the screen as Hampton, speaking with rapid fire, charismatic ease. Stanfield is usually pretty subdued, but his presence alone tends to be eloquent. Here he can’t really contend with Kaluuya.

The story is pretty even-handed, even though Stanfield plays the informant who eventually sets up Hampton’s assassination. We watch as Stanfield’s handler, played by Jesse Plemons, grapples with the morality of their assignment, working under the famously heavy hand of J. Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen).

The results are perhaps best appreciated for what they’re not: Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, a bafflingly lighthearted but on the whole similar story. I was never that enthusiastic about Lee’s film, but seeing this is all the more proof of how easy it is to improve upon. I get that Lee basically saw room for a farce (black guy infiltrates KKK!), but for a filmmaker so well known for his passion, the results were inert. 

Not so with Black Messiah. It even manages to get me onboard with Plemons, a supporting actor who’s gotten a steady amount of positive buzz recently. As the FBI liaison, he at last finds a context that makes sense to me. 

Hampton’s legacy is relatively small as a leader of the black community. His story plays out in the shadow of far more famous assassinations: MLK Jr., Malcolm X. The movie posits that Hampton was poised to succeed them, and that the FBI was desperate to prevent that from happening. That he was militant, at least in rhetoric, is where viewer interpretations of his potential will come into play, but the film itself stays away from judgment.

Suffice to say, his death still plays as tragedy. This is a story that needs telling, and this is a fine way to experience it. It might even be a great way. I will periodically revisit to ascertain.