‘Politics is war without bloodshed…’
The ongoing fight for civil rights has been a rich seam to mine for Hollywood over the years. Selma, The Help, Green Book, Malcolm X – all were Oscar nominated, all with varying degrees of success and critical acclaim. On the surface, Judas and the Black Messiah – Shaka King’s biopic of FBI informant and Black Panther member Bill O’Neal – is another film in the vein of those aforementioned. But in reality, it’s grittier than all of them. Something raw. Something dirty…
After being picked up by the police for grand theft auto and impersonating an FBI officer, Bill O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield) is set to work on infiltrating Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) and the Black Panther Party. All of this under the watchful eye of the enigmatic FBI agent Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons).
The concept of the informant is wholly familiar in mainstream cinema, with Donnie Brasco being the most obvious cultural touchstone. Judas and the Black Messiah never quite scales the heights of that minor masterpiece, but it does feature a trio of astonishing performances at its core. Stanfield and Plemons are both great in their eternal game of cat and mouse, but it is Kaluuya who steals the show with an electric turn as Hampton – every speech explodes with anger and righteous indignation – and the three of them together are truly a sight to behold.
While King sometimes struggles to contain such a disparate story in little over two hours (characters occasionally entered the fray and left me questioning who they were and what relevance they had), Judas and the Black Messiah never outstays its welcome, and the coda at the end of the film really brings home just how astonishing, how important a story this really is.
In a year in which cinema has been cut down and decimated like never before, Judas and the Black Messiah stands tall as one of 2021’s finest releases. A civil rights film that has earned every one of its six Oscar nominations.