Forces of revolution and oppression collide
and entangle in Shaka King’s blistering “Judas
and the Black Messiah,” a potent and vividly
acted drama about the FBI’s subversion and
assassination of Chicago Black Panther leader
Fred Hampton.
King’s film, which he wrote with Will Berson,
plunges into the dark chapter in American history
when J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI used surveillance,
infiltration and worse to check the ascent of Black
movements both peaceful (as in the case of Martin
Luther King Jr., chronicled recently in Sam Pollard’s
“MLK/FBI” documentary) and more militant.
Hampton, played by Daniel Kaluuya, was just 21
when he was shot and killed in an FBI raid in 1969.