Chicago, 1967. Car thief Bill O’Neil (LaKeith Stanfield) is arrested for impersonating an FBI agent and is offered a deal by Special Agent Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons). Infiltrate the Black Panthers and feed them information on charismatic leader Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) or go to prison for years. 

Judas And The Black Messiah is exhilarating, powerful and scary to watch. The film opens with Martin Sheen delivering a powerful speech as a bitter J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI must prevent the creation of a new black messiah in the same guise of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and here the metaphor for the films title is born. O’Neil is the Judas to Hampton’s black messiah and we must watch knowing what that entails and hoping that it just is not true. 

The film spends its time showing us what the Black Panthers did for their community aside from just their political activities. It also shows us how Hampton focussed on the community whilst committing his life to the cause and his burgeoning relationship with Deborah Johnson (Dominique Fishback). On the flip side it shows us O’Neil’s conflicted attitudes to what he is doing versus the fiscal remuneration he receives and even Mitchell’s occasional pangs of doubt to Hoover’s hard line. 

At the time of writing Kaluuya and Stanfield are both nominees for the academy award for best supporting actor in a feature film. It is an incredibly bizarre case of award fraud when in reality they are joint leads and would both be deserving of nominations in that field. Kaluuya stands out right now as one of the absolute best actors of his generation. In the last four years he has featured in Get Out, Black Panther, Widows and Queen and Slim. Every time he is on screen he gives the type of electric performance that it is hard to avert your eyes from. Here is no different. Stanfield on the other hand lends his character the shades of grey needed to allow us to relate to and understand his actions without instantly disliking him. 

Shaka King’s film is a clear example of systemic racism in an American institution that was tantamount to state sponsored murder and it is a must watch.