"Anywhere there is people, there is power."
Hey everyone, a million hugs and welcome to my very first post! I've been thinking of starting a movie blog for a while, and now here I am writing these lines at 2 am on a Saturday night. I'm particularly glad that I finally started this hobby with a special movie: Judas and the Black Messiah. I hope you'll enjoy reading this review as much as I enjoyed writing it!
To give a brief background information, Judas and the Black Messiah is co-written and directed by Shaka King, a 41-year-old filmmaker. The most unforgettable part of this movie is its performances: the talented cast consists Daniel Kaluuya, LaKeith Stanfield and Dominique Fishback. Kaluuya won a (well deserved!) Golden Globe award for his performance as well as the Critics' Choice Award. The movie also got nominated for 6 Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
The film starts off with our main character, O'Neal (LaKeith Stanfield) . After he steals a car by faking he's an FBI agent, his attempt fails as he gets caught by the police officers. Instead of getting jailed, he's forced to make a bargain with the police officer Roy (Jesse Plemons). According to this bargain, he'll leak important informations from The Black Panther Party instead of serving his sentence of nearly 15 years. Afterwards, the plot moves in this direction as O'Neal sells information to the police to corrupt the Black Panther Party. We mostly experience the movie from O'Neal's perspective. Throughout the movie, we share his guilt and regret, and witness as he slowly falls into despair. At the end of the movie, with Hampton's death, we see him at his lowest and feel his silent anguish. O'Neal was brought into life by the actor Stanfield, and his acting was brilliant if my intense feeling of antipathy for the character is any sign!
Speaking of top-notch acting, it would be a crime not to mention Kaluuya's brilliant performance of Fred Hampton. After reading tons of compliments, I decided to watch the movie to see it myself. Without exaggeration, I found every compliment worthy for this spectacular performance. As Hampton speaks with passion about revolution and equality, it touches your heart and fills you with a sense of injustice. When he shouts "I'm a revolutionary!" to the crowd, you repeat the words back out loud along with hundreds of people. We witness different aspects of this idealist character. We watch him fall in love, get into jail, try to build a family, and tragically get assassinated at the end. When the movie ended, I was content to meet an important historical figure. It sparked an interest in me to research Fred Hampton and his works. I was delighted to find a CD collection of his speeches. Here is the shopping link if you want to give it a look: Power to the People - The Black Panther Speeches.
Besides the spectacular performances I mentioned above, I unfortunately couldn't find another captivating part of this movie. I had a hard time with following what was going on at times, and relieved to realise that I wasn't the only one who felt that way after reading the other reviews. Thus, scenario-wise, it wasn't the best production to me for this year. Overall, with a great boost from the performances, I rated this movie 7 out of 10. It was indeed an unforgettable movie, but the plot itself could have been more engaging.
Thank you so much for reading this far. What do you think of this movie? I'd love to hear your comments about it. Or better yet, send me an email about anything and everything: moviesatdawn@gmail.com. Thank you again and I hope to see you in my next post!
"Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed."
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