Judas and the Black Messiah

The facts of the real event are enough, and King deploys small moments, quiet close-ups and tiny details that, in total, amount to a story of unimaginable sorrow.

Gifted as Hampton was with rare oratorial skills, the film on his life also tries to spin magic with his words...

Impressive, explosive and gut-wrenching.

It all adds up to a gripping drama...

This is a film made with a sense of outrage; although the events occurred so long ago, the ramifications that they led to are clearly still being felt in the US.

As a political statement, Judas is powerful, a quite relevant revisiting of an American past that, as William Faulkner would have observed, isn't even past.

For every conflicting element in Judas, there certainly were moments and aspects of King’s feature that worked beautifully on screen.

The triumph of the film that by the end you understand why O’Neal did what he did, and you feel for him, while at the same time rallying behind Hampton in his chants of “I am a revolutionary”.

Kaluuya, Fishback, Thorne and Powell transcend the limitations of the script and infuse an emotional history and character development missing in the actual script.

Judas and the Black Messiah is, no doubt, an indicative mirror image of our current state.