2021 Directed by Shaka King
The story of Fred Hampton, deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party, who was assassinated in 1969 by a Cook County tactical unit on the orders of the FBI and Chicago Police Department.
Lakeith Stanfield Daniel Kaluuya Dominique Fishback Jesse Plemons Ashton Sanders Algee Smith Darrell Britt-Gibson Lil Rel Howery Dominique Thorne Martin Sheen Amari Cheatom Ian Duff Caleb Eberhardt Robert Longstreet Nick Fink Nicholas Velez Terayle Hill Graham Lutes Khris Davis Amber Chardae Robinson Ikechukwu Ufomadu James Udom Jermaine Fowler Chris Hahn Raymond Seay Linda D Gaines
Kim Roth Jeff Skoll Ted Gidlow Aaron L. Gilbert Jason Cloth Sev Ohanian Poppy Hanks Zinzi Coogler Anikah McLaren
Rebecca Brown Danny Brown Brenden Meers Jeffrey Lange David Schellenberg Kara Martinelli White Vince Calabrese Amber Cover Brian J. Kramer Leslie McGuier
Jeremy Newmark Daniel Cohen Matthew T. Griffin Vincent Poitras Aaron Raff Brian Reiss Katherine Soares Jacinthe Côté Christian Lowe Chetan Gaur Dan Bornstein James Michael Miller David Eschrich Mishka Tarkar
Skip Lievsay Goro Koyama Rich Bologna Lawrence Zipf Nuno Bento Kevin Schultz Marlowe Taylor Jenna Dalla Riva Jack Heeren Davi Aquino João Galvão
Jason Collins Alan Tuskes Sian Richards Erica Stewart Mark Boley Maxi Spisak Victoria Hollar Lydia Kane Greta Gilfeather Rose Bridget Gilfeather-Novick
Jesus Was My Homeboy, Иуда и черный мессия, Judas y el mesías negro, Judas e o Messias Negro, 유다 그리고 블랙 메시아 개봉예정, Yehuda ve Siyah Mesih, Jidáš a černý mesiáš
Just fantastic. Shaka King takes a crucial moment in history that could feel so cloying and unfocused in the hands of a less careful director, and gives us a smart, uncompromising tragedy about fear and power that properly portrays Bill O’Neal’s story as both a slave rebellion and an act of war. Lakeith Stanfield and Daniel Kaluuya are exactly as great as you think they’re gonna be, if not better, but Shaka King’s name better reverberate through the halls of every studio after this.
Fred Hampton was 21 years old when he was murdered by the FBI. Twenty-one years old.
if your ensemble has lakeith stanfield in it, it’s gonna be a good film. devastating from beginning to end.
in my opinion we do not have a more entrancing, magnetic, fizzling, romantic, riveting, endlessly watchable actor in our ("our") generation than Daniel Kaluuya
The single biggest weakness this film has is that it’s stars are much older than the people they were portraying. The effect this has is to diminish what’s most appalling about the stories of O’Neill and Hampton — that they were little more than children, manipulated and murdered by their government.
I have no complaints with the performances themselves — although I think O’Neill is underwritten — and I think the film as a whole is very strong. But the age thing is a serious problem.
Career topping performances for both Kaluuya and Stanfield which is impressive considering how amazing their careers already are.
SUNDANCE 2021: film #25
“takes a thief to catch a thief”
SO well made. the performances here are on another level and all merit mentioning but i think my favorite was dominique fishback who brings both vulnerability and strength to the role. my money is on daniel for the oscar
this one movie taught me more about the black panthers than school ever did and probably ever will.
Kaluuya's tremendous performance here pretty much makes up for O'Neal being somewhat underwritten. I get making him a character of ambivalence but Stanfield seems to be emotionally pitched at a guy whose psyche gradually begins engaging in open revolt but whose historical and narrative actions don't line up with that. This is brutally timely, though, in a way that doesn't feel like it's the project's sole priority. I just wish it had been grittier, more confrontational, but in any case it's altogether striking and energetic.
62
A thrilling document that ultimately fails to provide a greater complexity for the two leads. Mostly I think the film isn't ambitious enough. It works as an introduction, but I would've liked another thirty minutes or so in character detail. Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield do the best with what they were given, however, and the craft of Shaka King's direction is riveting.
In retrospect, of course Warner Bros. wasn't going to put out a movie that genuinely grappled with Fred Hampton's revolutionary politics, and it's on me that I was idiot enough to wonder if they might. Instead, despite a couple quotes from Marxist literature, and one appearance each by the words "socialism" (at the start) and "proletariat" (at the end; also, I might have missed a "proletariat" in there, I wasn't really thinking to count it), this mostly turns Hampton into a generic "the bad things are very bad" rhetorician, who talks a lot about revolution and gets very keyed up about it, but never gets around to pinpointing what the revolution will consist of or what it will lead to.…
