CarterQ’s review published on Letterboxd:
Unpopular opinion time because I didn’t really dig this movie.
Lakeith Stanfield shines and somehow makes us emphasize with William O’Neal which shouldn’t be possible. Daniel Kaluuya doesn’t give a great performance but nothing noticeably bad. You can tell he’s trying his best to authentically replicate Fred Hampton. The script however is not, turning Hampton from a prolific black icon into a mouth-piece for quotes and someone to just represent the entire BPP instead of the filmmakers fully showing it to us themselves.
It’s well made, and really there’s not much to complain about but there’s a certain moment when you’re watching a good movie, where it shifts from being good to great, and for this I never had that moment. I kept waiting in anticipation, thinking there’s got to be a moment where it all comes together into the masterpiece letterboxd told me it was. But don’t be too mad at me now, 7/10 ain’t bad.
Though even if you like this movie a lot more than me you still gotta agree with me that this is definitely Oscar-bait.
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2021 Ranked
