Judas and the Black Messiah

The next new release on my must-see list was Judas and the Black Messiah and I went to see it yesterday.  It is an amazing movie but it was also deeply upsetting to me.  Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya), the Chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers, works to unify the disparate groups in Chicago in a Rainbow Coalition to protest against police brutality in the late 1960s.  FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen) believes that the Black Panthers are a security threat to the United States and fears Hampton's power, dubbing him the "Black Messiah."  He encourages his agents to take him down through whatever means necessary so Special Agent Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons) coerces William O'Neal (Lakeith Stanfield), a car thief who is facing a lengthy jail sentence for impersonating an agent, into infiltrating the Black Panthers.  O'Neal eventually rises to become Hampton's chief of security while providing information to the FBI which, among other things, is used to facilitate the assassination of Hampton in a police raid.  The story is so compelling.  It is obviously a dramatization of actual events (I don't know a lot about the Black Panthers beyond the propaganda I’ve been taught all of my life) but I found the portrayal of Hampton to be incredibly sympathetic, especially in scenes where he takes all of the weapons from his followers before meeting with a rival gang, when he refuses O'Neal's offer of C-4 to blow up city hall, and when he allocates money given to him personally for a community medical center.  This characterization makes his assassination even more disturbing and I had an almost visceral reaction to its portrayal, particularly the close-up of Hampton's pregnant girlfriend Deborah Johnson (Dominique Fishback) as he is shot.  It was also very difficult to watch scenes involving altercations between the Black Panthers and the police in light of recent events because they highlight the fact that we still have so far to go in the fight for racial equality.  All of the performances are stellar!  Kaluuya is absolutely electrifying as the revolutionary, especially during his speeches to crowds.  Stanfield does a brilliant job of portraying O'Neal's growing disillusionment with his role as he comes to believe in what Hampton is doing and Plemons gives a highly nuanced performance, particularly in an incredibly poignant scene where Mitchell realizes, just for a moment, that what the FBI is doing is wrong.  Finally, I loved the cinematography and the score which call to mind the gritty crime dramas of the 70s.  This is a powerful movie that is, unfortunately, so relevant for today and I think everyone should see it.