Judas and the Black Messiah MA. 125 minutes. 3 stars
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As Shaka King's fictionalised account of a pair of real-life characters begins, a documentary film crew are setting up for an interview and a man in a grey suit has started to bead with sweat at the forehead.
The man is Bill O'Neal (LaKeith Standfield) and the interview really took place. In fact, the 1989 interview for the documentary Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads 1965 to 1985 led O'Neal to take his own life.
O'Neal was a member of the Black Panthers, but secretly infiltrating and reporting on the Panthers for the FBI.
As we meet the young O'Neal he is jacking cars using an FBI badge rather than a gun, which gives FBI officer Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons) plenty to hold over the young black man's head as the FBI begin years of manipulation, forcing him into the role of undercover informant.
O'Neal befriends members of the Illinois Black Panther Party, including the man who would become their charismatic leader, Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya), and he would be tasked as Hampton's Security Chief.
Hampton has drawn the attention of FBI head J Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen), keen to ensure another strong leader cannot rise to take the leadership position for the black rights movement left behind in the wake of the late Martin Luther King Jr.
As the movement gains momentum and Hampton popularity, the FBI tighten the screws on O'Neal and force terrible outcomes for all.
Daniel Kaluuya was brilliant in Jordan Peele's 2018 horror Get Out and he thoroughly deserves the Golden Globe he won for his performance in this film as Fred Hampton.
Hampton was a brilliant public speaker and Kaluuya does his cadence and patter proud. Hampton is by far the more interesting character and the film could have been better for focussing more on Hampton's brilliance and tragedy than in having him the supporting character.
For those interested in learning more about these people, Fred Hampton is also a minor character in the Netflix Aaron Sorkin film The Trial of the Chicago 7.
Kaluuya plays wonderfully off Dominique Fishback as another activist, Deborah Johnson.
As Bill O'Neal, LaKeith Stanfield owns the film, at times sass and strut, at times a broken puppet of a man. It is a rich performance of a soul in conflict, and a difficult role to encourage our sympathy for this historically forgotten character.
Shaka King's screenplay and direction focuses on an America on fire, which the recent storming of the Capitol frankly makes this film feel current rather than a 50-year-old piece of historical reenactment.
What might have otherwise felt like awkward staging of the FBI as shady villains, despite history supporting the evidence in this instance, again feels current after four years of the Trump Administration's depiction on our TV screens. The Panthers were a complex group whose own actions need more depth in recounting than in only heroic mythologising.
There is a lot of history happening around the action of this film and King and his crew can deliver but a small slice. King has Marvel's Black Panther's Ryan Cooler as his producer, helping from the sidelines.
Shaka King is better known for a handful of television comedies and he draws notice as a director of deeper fare and as an actor's director.
Though there is plenty of violence in this film, it is carried out with empathy and with a sense of the place in which it occurs.
As the manipulating FBI contact, Jessie Plemons of Fargo and Breaking Bad gives great sense of depth to a character built for us to hate. Had he not met his own untimely end this role had Phillip Seymour Hoffman's name all over it.
Almost unrecognisable is Jedd Bartlett itself, Martin Sheen, as J Edgar Hoover, spitting invectives at his underlings.