As busy I get from time to time, I find that I can't see every movie under the sun, leaving my friends and colleagues to fill in the blanks for me. As poetically as I think I wax about movies on this website as a wannabe critic, there are other experts out there. Sometimes, it inspires me to see the movie too and get back to being my circle's go-to movie guy. Sometimes, they save me $9 and you 800+ words of blathering. In a new review series, I'm opening my site to friend submissions for guest movie reviews.
TODAY’S CRITIC: Lafronda Stumn
Lafronda Stumn is a student at Madisonville Community College and intends to graduate with an Associate's degree in Associate of the Arts. She plans on earning a Bachelors Degree in Motion Picture Studies and English at Wright State University. Her favorite Directors are Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Spike Lee, and her favorite actors are Al Pacino, Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, and Halle Berry. Lafronda contacted this page looking for a place to get published and I enjoy giving people that very kind of opportunity. This is her 32nd guest review for Every Movie Has a Lesson. Welcome as always, Lafronda!
HER REVIEW: Judas and the Black Messiah
Fred Hampton was only 21 years old when he was gunned down by the FBI, led by the racist, latently gay FBI honcho J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover was terrified of Fred Hampton’s dominance as a civil rights activist as a Black Panther leader, not only in Chicago where Hampton lived, but becoming a world leader following in the footsteps of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
Director Shaka King in only his second film, directs the film Judas and the Black Messiah. King directs a story about the life of Fred Hampton and the Black Panther who betrayed his trust, Bill O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield). O’Neal blackmailed to be an infiltrator for the FBI second in command Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons). O’Neal arrested for stealing a car from a federal agent.
Fred Hampton, played to impressive effect by Daniel Kaluuya, was a great union organizer who not only wanted to recruit rival Black civil rights workers. Hampton also wanted the Latino and poor white communities to come together for social justice and economic empowerment for a government that makes the white middle-class and upper-class people richer and more spoiled than they already are. Hampton falls in love with a worker for the movement named Deborah Johnson (Dominique Fishback). Deborah becomes more entrenched in the movement. Bill O’Neal becomes a trusted confidant to Hampton, and, at one point, Hampton gets arrested and sent to prison orchestrated by the FBI and the police. Several of Hampton Black Panther workers get arrested, one while still in the Hospital.
Accordingly, there are many brilliant scenes in this impeccable film including Hampton meeting with Green Beret members and where he asks for his flyers to be seen around their headquarters. Memorably, there is a fabulously directed and edited sequence in which a lady and a male panther fires machine gun against the police and they execute the scene at a fever pitch. Another masterful sense is when Black Panther Hampton is giving an electrifying speech to a local member with O’Neal looking on to scare and intimidate.
There is an engrossing scene when a racist white pastor. Hampton visits calling the pastor for having a confederate flag behind him while giving his sermon. Urgently, J Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen) talks to Mitchell for the real reason he’s after Hampton and his organization. Out of desperation, O’Neal tries to convince Hampton to blow up the FBI headquarters and begs Hampton to consider the option for getting of the FBI off their backs.
Perfectly, the performance of Daniel Kaluuya is superb and is riveting in a portrayal of a man who is on a mission to make the world a better place of all races, creeds, and class to great emotional power a precision. LaKeith Stansfield is equally strong as the black sheep of the Panther Party. Stanfield’s character is very selfish but also terrified of what he feels he needs to do to save his own skin. With great confidence and steely-eyed resolve, Dominque Fishback as Deborah gives quiet authority and inner strength with her life at risk and a surprise development in Hampton and Johnson relationship. Plemmons’ performance is eerie in how cold and calm he is in his bigotry and Martin Sheen is barely recognizable as J. Edgar Hoover, whose vendettas against Hampton show his hatred and his insecurities as the most dangerous man in United States.
Judas and the Black Messiah is a brilliant docudrama about our own government in taking down a Panther and how us an Americans lost a great man who truly would have been on par of great civil rights leaders of all time whose life is cut abruptly.
RATING: ****
CONCLUSION
Thank you again, Lafronda! You are welcome anytime. Friends, if you see a movie that I don't see and want to be featured on my website, hit up my website's Facebook page and you can be my next GUEST CRITIC!
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