Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)
Directed by Shaka King
Bill O'Neal infiltrates the Black Panthers on the orders of FBI Agent Mitchell and J. Edgar Hoover. As Black Panther Chairman Fred Hampton ascends—falling for a fellow revolutionary en route—a battle wages for O’Neal’s soul.
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4 films that influenced Judas and the Black Messiah
What critics say influenced Judas and the Black Messiah
Judas is like JFK (except the conspiracy is real) with Kaluuya instead of Kevin Costner or Donnie Brasco with LaKeith Stanfield instead of Johnny Depp.
It’s a familiar dramatic beat, found in undercover-agent narratives as varied as Donnie Brasco and Point Break .
We've seen movies like this before ( The Departed , Donnie Brasco ) but never with quite these circumstances.
Judas and the Black Messiah is almost like a mob movie in the style of Donnie Brasco, The Departed, or Carlito’s Way, but from an emotional, societal, and – most importantly – non-white perspective, King’s film stands for so much more.
Judas and the Black Messiah concerns that betrayal, playing as a sort of Donnie Brasco undercover drama that unfolds within the weighty context of sociopolitical fury and sorrow.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
Directed by Andrew Dominik
Characters Visuals Themes
The relationship between the two men plays like a tighter, more combustible version between that of Casey Affleck and Brad Pitt in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford .
In employing Wild Bill’s perspective, the filmmakers hope to follow in the footstep of Andrew Dominik’s “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.”
His betrayal of Hampton is effectively handled better in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford , another film with a florid title that more deserves that indulgence.
Of all unlikely movies, “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” may be the closest in spirit to this one.
This film had a lot in common with The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford .
Produced by Ryan Coogler (Black Panther, Creed) and directed by Shaka King (his studio feature film directorial debut), the film is based in Chicago and is inspired by the true story of how the FBI used an informant, William O’Neal, to betray Hampton—the 21-year-old chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party who police killed in a raid at his home while he slept in the bed he shared with his pregnant fiancée on December 4, 1969.
Producer Ryan Coogler ( Creed, Marvel’s Black Panther ) and director Shaka King depict black political ambivalence more credibly than Spike Lee does, yet their attention to intimate details about brotherhood (O’Neal’s entrapment by a devious FBI agent while a cruel J. Edgar Hoover hovers in the background, plus Hampton’s romantic life and social commitment) is disingenuous.
He reprised the role when the film was expanded into a 2013 feature , and then I started seeing him everywhere: As the young man shot and killed in the diner in “ Selma ” (2014), as the guy who yells “Get out!” in “ Get Out ” (2017), anchoring the demented indie comedy “ Sorry to Bother You ” (2018), as the police detective foil to Daniel Craig in “ Knives Out ” and as Adam Sandler’s beleaguered fixer in “ Uncut Gems ” (both 2019).
The mesmerizing Lakeith Stanfield of Sorry to Bother You and The Photography plays Bill O’Neal, a hard case who is pinched for a low-level crime and forced to become an informant for the FBI.
During that time, Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya; Get Out ), the chairman of the Illinois chapter was betrayed by a low-level thief, Bill O'Neal (LaKeith Stanfield; Sorry to Bother You ), who infiltrated the Black Panther organization.
Viewers are encouraged to check Stanfield out in the loopy 2018 film “Sorry to Bother You.”
Daniel Kaluuya ( Queen & Slim ) plays Hampton, filling the screen with that man’s brilliance, charm and idealism, but he is less the focus than the man who betrayed him, William O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield, Sorry to Bother You ).
Already in his career, Stanfield has excelled playing characters trapped in personas not quite their own: the body-snatched victim of Get Out ; the code-switching office drone of Sorry to Bother You.