![]() ![]() In exchange for having his federal felonies dropped, O’Neal agreed to infiltrate the Black Panther Party where he proved so successful an informant and effective a saboteur (the FBI’s COINTELPRO operation specialized in “counterintelligence”) that he was put in charge of Hampton’s security. It’s too easy imagining many teens agreeing to almost anything in the abstract to avoid prison time. Only age 17 when the FBI picked him up for driving a stolen vehicle across the Illinois/Michigan border, O’Neal was a kid. The real O’Neal’s situation was actually more dire than Stanfield’s in the movie. This is quite the inversion of what we’ve come to expect from film and television tropes over the decades, and it equally underscores the wretched situation of O’Neal’s circumstances, as well as how the media and audiences have evolved with their perception of law enforcement, particularly in “undercover” movies about informants. Facing up to seven years in prison, O’Neal is instead offered freedom by way of complicity-or as the movie heavily implies, he avoids incarceration by selling his soul. In Stanfield’s hands, O’Neal is a tragic, ruined man who appears damned from nearly the first scene when FBI handler Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons) has him cold for impersonating a Bureau agent while boosting cars. Like the title suggests, Judas and the Black Messiah is equally the narrative of William O’Neal (played shrewdly by LaKeith Stanfield), the Black Panther member who was in charge of Hampton’s security, yet was working for the FBI before they ever met.Īs portrayed in the film, O’Neal exudes a jittery and nervous energy that is often contagious to the viewer, even if the would-be protagonist never quite becomes fully sympathetic. For while Shaka King’s brutal filmmaking is a piece of political lightning, one that seeks to better memorialize Hampton’s legacy, it is also technically a crime drama told from the point-of-view of the cops-or at least their informant. That this horrifying injustice is now streaming in the homes of tens of millions is itself a small act of revolution, as is how the film deconstructs what we expect from movies about law enforcement. As a dramatization of the final days and months of Fred Hampton’s life, the film draws attention to the struggles of a self-described revolutionary-and how by all accounts from the survivors and witnesses of a guns-blazing police raid, he was executed while incapacitated in his bed. One of the many powerful things about Judas and the Black Messiah is simply the fact that the movie’s story is being told on such a significant platform. This article contains Judas and the Black Messiah spoilers. ![]()
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