Judas and the Black Messiah

Shaka King’s Oscar-nominated true story about an FBI informant who infiltrates the Black Panthers in order to garner evidence that will lead to the arrest of their controversial chairman.

“Looking back on your activities in the late 60s and early 70s, what would you tell your son about what you did then?”

- Interviewer, to Bill O’Neal

Bill O’Neal is a young criminal operating in 1960s Chicago with a full proof plan – enter a bar, pose as an FBI agent, flash a fake badge, and identify which of the patrons is the owner of the glossy-looking sports car parked outside. After claiming that the car has been reported stolen, he places the innocent owner in cuffs and takes the keys from their pocket. In and out of the bar in less than five minutes – the perfect plan, right? Unfortunately, the reality of Bill’s master plan is not as suave as the opening scene of director Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah. Unlike the tense staccato jazz notes and weaving tracking shot that frame the botched robbery, there is nothing expertly executed about O’Neal’s clumsy approach which ends in him pulling his newly acquired wheels right into the path of an incoming police car. O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield) is looking at a minimum of 5 years in prison for grand theft auto and impersonating a federal officer, until FBI agent Roy Mitchell, played by perennial slimy weasel Jessie Plemons, offers him an alternative – infiltrate the Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers to garner evidence that will lead to the arrest of their chairman, Fred Hampton.

Daniel Kaluuya’s Hampton is the focus of the FBI’s campaign to quell the ongoing civil rights movement. We see Martin Sheen’s J. Edgar Hoover – the latest Hollywood heavyweight to be accepted into the Heavy Prosthetics Society, joining recent graduates Gary Oldman (as Churchill in The Darkest Hour) and Christian Bale (as Dick Cheney in Vice) – delivering a speech to FBI agents about the importance of silencing Hampton, the young Black Panther chairman whose tour delivering improvised, poetic speeches is empowering young black Americans to stand up for their right to equality. The FBI now have their man on the inside, as O’Neal starts by attending workshops hosted by Hampton and begins to make in-roads with the Panthers. O’Neal establishes himself as a member of the Chicago Panthers after Agent Mitchell grants his request for a car, meaning he can become the driver for Hampton and his inner circle – ‘Deep Gully’ by the Outlaw Blues Band, later sampled by Cypress Hill, perfectly soundtracks O’Neal rolling up to collect Hampton in his new whip, and you need a minute to zone back in to 60s Chicago from the halcyon days of early 90s West Coast hip-hop.

Judas and the Black Messiah acts as a vehicle for two of the industry’s most exciting young actors to flex their muscles. Kaluuya completely inhibits Hampton in a way that we haven’t seen in his career thus far, physically carrying himself in a way that is unique to any of his other notable performances, with a somehow different somatic presence as Hampton, wholly convincing as a leader amongst his group of Panthers.

LaKeith Stanfield is the stand-out performance of the film – high praise in any film, but particularly meaningful here given the quality on show. Although we know from the outset that Stanfield’s O’Neal is infiltrating the Panthers to avoid jail, there is a permanent undercurrent in his performance that keeps the viewer wondering whether there may now be mixed feelings behind O’Neal’s actions. As Agent Mitchell points out when observing O’Neal at a Black Panthers rally, ‘either this guy deserves an Academy Award, or he really believes this shit’.

On the subject of the Academy Awards, both Kaluuya and Stanfield have been nominated in the same category, for Best Supporting Actor. This is an unusual move – especially once you see the film and understand that Kaluuya’s Hampton is clearly the leading role – apparently caused by the split of leading/supporting votes for Kaluuya from Academy members. It seems like an unfortunate misstep that may detract from the chances of either actor winning in their deserving category, though Kaluuya is probably one of the frontrunners in the supporting actor category. Whether he would be at all fussed to pick up an Oscar in a questionable category is still to be confirmed by sources close to the actor.

The supporting cast also offer astute performances – Plemons’ FBI agent manages to be clean-cut, trustworthy and slippery all at once, while Dominique Fishback, as Hampton’s romantic interest, is completely compelling as the concerned girlfriend trying to keep her influential Panther boyfriend grounded.

Despite his only previous feature-length film being his master’s degree project under Spike Lee’s tutelage at NYU, director Shaka King oversees an extremely accomplished, well-crafted film that always feels authentic and places the viewer in the middle of the race issues of 1960s USA. The night scenes shot by cinematographer Sean Bobbitt, a frequent collaborator of Steve McQueen’s, capture a living, breathing Chicago – the distant glare from cars hundreds of yards down the street, the neon-lit signs reflecting on glass windows. Tense moments are accentuated by pounding, percussive samples of background noise or shrieking jazz notes. A close-up on a character’s face frames the screen as horror unfolds around them.

Remaining spoiler-free, the film’s climax is genuinely shocking and represents yet another case of something so unbelievably unjust that it’s hard to process that these events happened in living memory. We have been presented two perspectives of the same story – the desire to unite the under-represented for the benefit of society, versus the establishment’s militant approach to something they believe is a threat. As activist H. Rap Brown is shown saying in the montage at the beginning of the film, ‘no individual creates a rebellion; it’s created out of the conditions’.