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.

Get Out (2017)

rating: ****

the story: Chris finds out it's dangerous to be black among white folks with ulterior motives.

review: Wow, so this is a great example of knowing what a movie technically accomplishes, and getting a totally different grasp upon actually seeing it.  Get Out, for me, was a victim of the vast scaling back of film watching I've experienced over the past decade.  I was pretty out of control, generally speaking, for a few years.  I went to the movies all the time.  I had a pretty comprehensive sampling of what was released.  Then I had to become more selective.  I had to start making some snap judgments before movies ever hit theaters, including must-see picks and things that didn't seem like they were for me.  Get Out seemed like it wasn't for me.  It seemed like one of those movies hipsters like, that only seemed to be clever.

Boy was I wrong.

The surface elements are certainly there but even those underscore its greater message.  It's funny that Get Out even had a chance to be widely celebrated, as it mocks liberal attitudes at a time when liberals have virtually succeeded in dominating popular entertainment, both the product and reception of it.  But by the end, it becomes so savage as to become inexplicable.  Clearly a lot of people just didn't get it.  They chuckled knowingly, without comprehension.

You see, Chris's fate is damn ironic.  That he ends up escaping it is much a part of how we've reached this endless public hysteria as anything that helped create it.  When Bradley Whitford says he would've voted for Obama a third time if only given the option, which he repeats after Allison Williams has already told us he'd say so, director Jordan Peele has shown his hand.  That's the whole message right there.  Liberals somewhat liberally exploited black people to get the White House.  Period.  And then moved on, after everything spiraled out of control. 

Yeah.  Peele's ascent as filmmaker came from a popular sketch comedy series, Key & Peele, which can be felt in Chris's best friend, who hilariously puts the whole thing in context for viewers and comes to his rescue at the end.  Chris himself, as portrayed by Daniel Kaluuya, is dumbfounded by the whole experience but never at a loss for action.  The only time he's a victim is when Catherine Keener brainwashes him. 

Stephen Root shows up in a supporting role, subverting his usual comedic persona by both leaning into and away from the stereotype Southern racist the movie never actually delivers.  This is a horror movie with comedy instincts, not a comedy with horror instincts, not a parody.  That's what makes the whole thing so refreshing, so subversive, and so biting.  It might even be called satire.   Probably the way it will properly be understood later.

So I'm glad I finally saw it.