Judas and the Black Messiah
Year: 2021
Rating: R
Length: 126 minutes / 2.10 hours
Isn’t it funny how I only had a passing understanding of the Black Panther party until this last year, when it featured in two Oscar-nominated movies? Granted, it was more of a secondary plot point in The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020), so the movie where it was the star of the show was none other than Judas and the Black Messiah (2021). But, regardless of the coincidence, I did learn a lot about the Black Panther party through this movie and continue to hate the past that straight white males have created for others.
Judas and the Black Messiah‘s title is quite fitting considering the unification that Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) managed to create in Chicago in the late ’60s. I was shocked to see some of the groups of people he managed to bring together, even if it made sense for them to rise up against the system of white privilege that had kept them oppressed for so long. But, of course, the “insider mole” plot has been done to death before, so even if this was how it really went down, it felt too reminiscent of other movies that came before it.
Overall, though, Judas and the Black Messiah is an engaging film with some moments of great tension and great anger at injustice. One of my other qualms, though, is how I felt it wasn’t easy to understand what many of the characters were saying because their dialects were so thick. Some subtitles might have been useful. Additionally, the movie didn’t really feel like it was about Fred Hampton, but rather about the people around him, like Bill O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield) and Deborah Johnson (Dominique Fishback). As such, it felt distracted in these side plots when it should have been a little more focused.
An eye-opening history lesson on the Black Panther party, I give Judas and the Black Messiah 3.5 stars out of 5.
1/2
