Comparing the Black Panthers to white
supremacists, he says: “You can’t cheat your way
to equality and you certainly can’t shoot your
way to it.”
But Mitchell is an operative in Hoover’s FBI. When
Hoover (Martin Sheen) makes an appearance,
“Judas and the Black Messiah” hints at a wider war
of oppression — a war, Hoover says, over “our way
of life.” This makes King’s film a clear counterpoint
to Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman,” which showed
the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program (Cointelpro)
aiding, not sabotaging, Black radicals.
Caught in between the Panthers and the feds
is O’Neal. For Stanfield, the gifted actor of
“Sorry to Bother You” and “Knives Out,” it’s a
compelling tightrope of a slippery performance,
poised between empathy and judgment for the
pitiable O’Neal. As damning as the film’s title
is, Stanfield’s O’Neal is never quite aware of the
seriousness of the game he’s playing until its
gruesome and appalling end.
It’s a balance reflective of King’s film overall.
“Judas and the Black Messiah,” resurrecting
a painful saga of police racial injustice, is a
self-evidently timely film without stating its
contemporary resonance literally. If anything,
you want it draw Stanfield and Kaluuya
together more often than it does. Instead, the
movie devolves and grows more sorrowful as
Hampton’s movement is stymied, and we’re left
feeling the loss of a history that might have been.
“Judas and the Black Messiah,” a Warner Bros.
release, is rated R by the Motion Picture
Association of America for violence and
pervasive language. Running time: 126 minutes.
Three and a half stars out of four.