Butler's Cinema Scene

Foreground: Daniel Kaluuya as Black Panther Fred Hampton; background: LaKeith Stanfield as FBI informant William O’Neal

“JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH”  My rating: B (HBO Max)

126 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The title of “Judas and the Black Messiah” smacks of folklorish hyperbole, but then Shaka King’s film about the assassination of Black Panther Fred Hampton is positively overflowing with Biblical  allegory.

The Black Messiah, of course, is Hampton, a rising star in black activism who was targeted for elimination by the FBI and shot to death in his bed during a raid in Chicago in 1969. Hampton is here given the hagiographic treatment…after this you half expect the Catholic Church to start stamping out medallions with his likeness.

Whether Hampton was the sinless knight errant portrayed here is a matter for the historians to parse; what’s not in doubt is that Brit actor Daniel Kaluuya sells this interpretation with such conviction and certainty that — while you’re watching the movie, anyway — you absolutely buy into its premise that this guy could really have become the black messiah. Comparisons to Bobby Kennedy seem apt.

Of course, saints aren’t nearly as interesting as devils.  The Judas of this yarn is Bill O’Neal, a crook and con artist recruited by the feds to infiltrate the Chicago chapter of the Panthers, rise within its ranks, report on what he saw and eventually set up the circumstances under which Hampton would be murdered.

O’Neal is played by LaKeith Stanfield as a man of few or no moral convictions, a survive-at-any-cost scrambler blackmailed into informing and, once in place, perfectly willing to reap the perks of his position.  Does he feel guilt? Remorse?

Hard to say.  What’s obvious, though, is that Stanfield perfectly captures the desperation and creative scheming of a lowlife being squeezed from both directions.  The authorities will send him to prison if he fails to cooperate; his Panther colleagues would no doubt kill him if they knew of his betrayals.

In a weird way we find ourselves rooting for him to squirm his way through this minefield of treachery.

Dominique Fishback

“Judas…” has a third important character.  Dominique Fishback is the Magdalene-like Deborah Johnson, an idealistic activist who fell in love with Hampton and was pregnant with his son at the time of his murder. Her scenes with Kaluuya not only humanize Hampton, showing the tenderness behind the often angry rhetoric, but stand as a sort of tribute to the young black women who played an essential role in the movement.

“Judas and the Black Messiah” looks and feels authentic; the production design captures the appropriate late-60s vibe, and big chunks of dialogue are drawn from Hampton’s public speeches (the guy really was inspiring).

But writer/director King sometimes overplays his hand.  While O’Neal’s meetings with his FBI handler (Jesse Plemons) are delicious little capsules of persuasion, flattery and intimidation,  a couple of scenes with a heavily-prosthetized Martin Sheen as FBI director J. Edgar Hoover are almost wincingly bad.  That Hoover was a corrupt pig is not in question; nevertheless, these moments are so heavy-handed that they take the viewer out of the moment.

From a purely historic point of view, “Judas…” does a terrific job of recreating a seminal moment of the Civil Rights movement. The filmmakers clearly admire much of what the Panthers accomplished, and show no ambivalence in depicting the corruption of the white establishment. There are moments when you get so angry you want to smash something.

That those feelings can be recaptured 50 years after the fact is a testament to the movie’s power.

| Robert W. Butler