Judas and the Black Messiah: In this essential bit of Black Panther history, Judas is the more intriguing character
By Liam Lacey
Rating: A
The other essential movie of the past mad year, alongside Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland, is Judas and the Black Messiah, a drama about the 1969 police killing of the 21-year-old Black Panther leader, Fred Hampton.
Hampton’s death earned an off-screen chapter in Aaron Sorkin’s recent The Trial of the Chicago 7, but gets the full tragic treatment in Shaka King’s sensational and timely film.
FBI informant William O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield) gets his orders from FBI agent Jesse Plemons
Featuring terrific performances from Get Out alumnus, Daniel Kaluuya as the young revolutionary Hampton, and LaKeith Stanfield as FBI informant, William O’Neal, the film is a revelation from King, a director, who until now, was known for his television work and the 2013 comedy, Newlyweeds.
A panoramic assemblage of archival footage, re-creations, seventies’-style action sequences and a harrowing climax, the film is shot in widescreen with a subtly retro sheen by cinematographer Sean Bobbitt (a frequent collaborator with Steve McQueen and Michael Winterbottom). With a bristling complexity, the film resurrects Hampton as the martyred star of Black political consciousness, revealed through the eyes of his betrayer.
Though Fred Hampton’s name may not be widely known today, his murder was the subject of The Murder of Fred Hampton, an outstanding 1971 documentary by editor-director Howard Alk (Don’t Look Back, Janis), which outlined how the Chicago police, in league with the FBI, carried out Hampton’s assassination.
Alk’s film took the perspective of the Black Panthers (who later organized public tours of the death scene to counter police spin). King and co-writer Will Berson, working in consultation with Hampton’s surviving family, take the point-of-view of the “Judas” of the story, a skittish car thief and sometimes police impersonator named William O’Neal, who makes a devil’s bargain with a paternalistic FBI agent, Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons), who holds the threat of a multi-year prison sentence over his head.
Among the many fascinating resonances here, Judas is the flip side of Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, a period film about a Black police informant who infiltrates the Klu Klux Klan.
PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN
In King’s film, FBI head J. Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen) directly compares the Panthers to the Klan as terror organization, calling the Panthers “the single greatest threat to our national security.” In the wake of the killings of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, Hoover calls on the FBI to prevent the rise of a “Black messiah” who could inspire a government over-throw. While the filmmakers had no foreknowledge that an actual White coup attempt was imminent, the differences in the government response is another indication of the film’s timeliness.
While the movement was steeped in revolutionary rhetoric, it was also about on-the-ground breakfast programs, health care and aid. And, perhaps most disconcerting to the FBI, Hammond was an expert community organizer, bringing together different left-wing factions — Hispanics, students and even a white confederate-flag waving group of displaced and poverty-stricken Southerners living in Chicago.
Following an archival montage of the Black Panther’s growth from 1966 on, O'Neal is introduced in recreated clips from the only on-screen interview he ever gave (for the PBS docu-series Eyes on the Prize II).
But he’s also introduced in a playful action sequence, where, in a floppy hat and trench coat, he masquerades as an FBI agent while staging a bar robbery. Narrowly escaping with his life, O’Neal screeches away in a stolen car, but ends up in a police interrogation room.
The car theft is one thing, but the big crime. impersonating a federal agent, carries a five-year sentence. O’Neal takes the bait he’s offered, choosing to work for the feds for real by getting close to Hampton, the young chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Panthers.
One of the intriguing achievements of the film is that it shows Hampton as a young man whose ideas were still evolving: When first seen, he’s a firebrand if somewhat derivative orator, given to chanted slogans and cult-like discipline of men and women wearing dress-alike leather jackets and berets.
But in an encounter with a skeptical audience member, Deborah Johnson (Dominique Fishback), who questions his writing skills, we see Hampton’s insecure, shy side. The two become lovers, and he broadens and deepens his sense of mission.
Later, when Hampton goes to jail briefly on a bogus charge, Deborah discovers she’s pregnant with Fred’s child. While the film doesn’t soften Hampton’s abrasive proclamations about the satisfaction of “killing the pigs,” his rage comes in a context of his colleagues being repeatedly attacked and killed by the Chicago police in a war of attrition.
Yet, much of the tension of the movie comes from O’Neal’s repeated scrapes with exposure. At one meeting, he’s recognized, leading to Panther enforcer Judy Harmon (Dominique Thorne) holding a gun on him until he can explain himself. In another case, a visiting Panther from New Jersey George Sams (Terayle Hill) recounts the gruesome torture and murder of a suspected informant, Alex Rackley, deeply unsettling O’Neal..
If It is fascinating to consider O’Neal’s contradictions. He was apparently a man of mystery, even those who knew him until his early death, a man who saw himself, alternatively, as a revolutionary and a federal agent.
While the film circles around the bright sun of Hampton’s character - a young man who predicted his own death as a revolutionary - the more complex tragedy is that of O’Neal, a haunted figure.
LaKeith, after his brilliant performance as a code-switching call-centre employee in Boots Riley’s 2018 satire, Sorry to Bother You, takes the schism further here. With his FBI agent handler, he sounds bureaucratic and white. As the gun-toting chief of security, with the Panthers, he’s all about the emotion of the revolution.
When Mitchell, his FBI handler secretly attends a Panther rally, and sees O’Neal pumping his fist in the air, he mockingly suggests that either O’Neal has crossed over, or he deserves an Academy Award.
LaKeith, as the actor playing that fractured role, is surely a candidate for one.
Judas and the Black Messiah. Directed by Shaka King. Written by Will Berson and Shaka King, based on a story by Kenny Lucas and Keith Lucas. Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, LaKeith Stanfield, Jesse Plemons and Dominique Fishback.. Judas and the Black Messiah is available on digital video on demand on Feb 12.