JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH
Daniel Kaluuya won the Oscar® for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in Shaka King's powerful telling of the FBI's infiltration of the Black Panther Party under its notorious COINTELPRO program. LaKeith Stanfield gives an impressive performance as William O'Neal, recruited by agent Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons) to infiltrate the Panthers and gather dirt on their leader Fred Hampton in exchange for the dismissal of charges he faced for car theft and impersonating a federal officer. At the urging of FBI bureau chief J. Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen), Mitchell pushes O'Neal to find the facts to fit a predetermined narrative that the Chicago-based Panthers chapter were criminals bent on fomenting violence and ignore all evidence to the contrary. The FBI's action led to the eventual murder of Hampton and fellow Panther Mark Clark by the local Chicago police — but O'Neal, later relocated under the FBI's witness protection program, is shown to be a destroyed man, too. DIR/SCR/PROD Shaka King; SCR Will Berson; PROD Ryan Coogler, Charles D. King. U.S., 2021, color, 126 min. RATED R
AFI Member passes accepted.
Run Time: 126 Minutes
Opening Date: Saturday, February 05, 2022
Genre: Drama, biography
