“A badge is scarier than a gun”: Film Review of “Judas and the Black Messiah”

Mark Latta 

More than one review has referred to Judas as a biopic of Fred Hampton. While the movie incorporates biographical elements from Hampton’s short adult life and murder, it seems to me as a mistake to classify Judas and the Black Messiah as a biography. While centered on Hampton and O’Neil, the movie is really an examination of two long-playing historical themes: power and betrayal. The Biblical references within the title and early scenes with a sickly looking J. Edgar Hoover (played by Martin Sheen) set the viewer up to understand a story nearly as old as time:  betrayal between two individuals, indeed, but also the treachery of some against their own communities and cultural and economic interests, and the use of betrayal by a supposedly democratic government as a weapon and tool to maintain its power.

Judas excels in telling the interpersonal and cultural story of betrayal and the doomed quest for economic and social power in many ways. The acting, directing, dialogue, story framing, cinematography— everything works well together, and Shaka King should be commended for such a strong film and deliberate screenplay. Likewise, Daniel Kaluuya’s performance as Hampton and Lakieth Stanfield’s delivery of William O’Neal were both brilliant. If this review were focused narrowly on the movie, it would be tempting to briefly state, “Judas and the Black Messiah should be on your watchlist because this is an excellent movie and has been nominated for buckets of awards for very credible reasons,” and be done.

It’s also important to point out that Judas and the Black Messiah, made and manifested by a host of excellent Black talent, is itself a testament to the necessity and cultural power of Black talent. Feeling as if it is necessary to point this out speaks to the ways anti-Black racism continues to drive the larger narrative of filmmaking and culture work.

But—there’s also something very unsettling about Judas and the Black Messiah in the way that it focuses predominately upon the betrayal of Hampton (and the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party) by O’Neal. There was also something unsettling about watching a dramatized narrative (albeit one that adheres impressively to historical accuracy) of Hampton’s assassination and the targeted dismantling of The Black Panther Party by the U.S. Government. After watching the movie a few times, I found myself wondering why King and the Lucas brothers preferred to focus narrowly through the lens of Hampton’s and O’Neal’s interpersonal relationships rather more concretely on what could be understood as a political and social examination on the use of modern-day lynching techniques and dictatorial brutality of the U.S. government.  While Hampton’s betrayal was and is infuriating, O’Neal’s storyline was just one manipulation among many taken by the United States to silence opposition. The illegal campaign of assassinations and discord directed by the U.S. toward the Black Panther Party (and other anti-imperialist groups) played out largely in the background, leaving it up to the viewer to unravel this complex and conspiratorial injustice.

The appeal and allure of narrative as an explanatory device make it a powerful tool. However, telling a story a certain way also eliminates other tellings from becoming objects of examination unless they are taken up later in a different story. This is what I found unsettling about Judas. Even as it worked masterfully as cinema, the larger social and political forces of anti-Black racism, internal imperialism, and settler colonialism were too easy to situate as narrative devices and therefore easy to overlook as the immediate threats to humanity they were and continue to be today. The same forces that want to direct our attention away from the sociopolitical reality that Fred Hampton (and so many others) was murdered by a government bent on coalescing around white supremacy seem related to the desire to view this movie as a personal biopic or interpersonal drama rather than a social commentary.

Although made with the blessing of the Hampton family, part of me wonders if this is the movie that Fred Hampton would have wanted. Judas centers the individual when Hampton centered people. Judas navigates interpersonal strife and O’Neal’s inner turmoil when Hampton navigated social structures of oppression. There are moments when the movie falls victim to the American tendency to focus on individual players and mythologize people while ignoring the community and collective actions. Hampton’s devotion to Marxism—essential to understanding his and The Black Panther philosophy—remain underexplored through Judas and the Black Messiah, playing out largely in flashes during montages and when Kaluuya delivers admittedly impressive performances of Hampton’s oratory abilities. The formation of the Rainbow Coalition and the commitment to collectivism also seemed diminished by portraying them as aspects of Hampton’s personality rather than the learned practice of community organizing. Hampton’s class-based Marxist political philosophy was one of the reasons he was such an effective organizer and credible threat to top-down power structures. The near-omission of Marxism seems, at best, a missed opportunity for Judas to inspire current and future social leaders in the same way Hampton himself has. 

Ironically, this mythology of personality was what sealed Hampton’s fate when Hoover and the F.B.I. created the “Black Messiah” while ignoring the social conditions that animated a movement. The Black Panthers and others, as well as overlooking and downplaying the collective responses to these conditions. It was the F.B.I. that insisted on seeing the Black Panthers as a collection of individual identities to be deal with on a case-by-case basis. Focusing on individual identities rather than the movement is a technique in denying the legitimacy of collectivism and is also something for which the device of narrative is particularly well suited. Judas and the Black Messiah does well in telling an abbreviated story of Fred Hampton’s rise and untimely fall. Still, there were many moments in which I wondered if a dramatized retelling of one individual was keeping our attention away from the critical questions about a world that necessitates the Black Panther Party or shrugs when visionary and collective responses to injustice are silenced.

If we tell the story of Fred Hampton—but leave out how Hampton thought capitalism and white supremacy were the real enemies, two sides of the same coin—have we really told the story of Fred Hampton? If someone walks away from Judas thinking the Black Panther Party dissipated and puttered out rather than intentionally disappeared by our government, police, media, and pro-white culture… what has been gained? There are moments of evident criticality and stinging rebukes of a power structure at war with the Black community (O’Neal’s confession to Agent Mitchell that he stole with a badge rather than a gun because “a badge is scarier than a gun” is one), but these moments seem muted. They present through the backdrop.

But, again, Akua Njeri (formerly Deborah Johnson) and Fred Hampton Jr. provided their blessing to King in the creation of Judas.  This is an important point, and it ultimately leads me to wonder if I – a white reviewer who was born seven years after Hampton’s murder—have any right to ask for Judas and the Black Messiah to do anything other than to tell the story of Fred Hampton that his partner and son wanted to be told. Probably not. It is also worth pointing out that many of the more critical aspects about Judas mentioned in this review have been examined thoroughly through other documentaries, books, and projects.  And, it’s not as if the predominantly white audience took to the streets and tossed out politicians in response to the volume of work that illustrates the degree to which the United States government conspired with cultural institutions and manipulated its population to decimate the Black community.

Telling a story one way requires choices to be made and excludes other ways of telling the story to take shape.  Shaka King, likely taking note of many others who have attempted to point out the brazen illegality of the U.S. government in its treatment of the Black Panthers and the jarring silence from America’s white citizenry, opted to craft a well-told story about O’ Neal and Hampton. They were perhaps our Judas and Black Messiah. In doing so, he’s gained the attention of a still-too-often-silent white constituency. While Judas and the Black Messiah is not the source of record for Hampton and the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers, it was not meant to be. For those who mourned Hampton’s betrayal and death through Judas and the Black Messiah, let’s hope that we use this moment to remember the larger struggle to which Hampton gave his life.