Full Movie Reviews
Rating of
3/4
Trust Is a Two-Way Street... That Dead Ends
Chris Kavan - wrote on 03/25/2021
Loyalty, trust, betrayal - all three play a major part in Judas and the Black Messiah and it goes all the way up the chain. Fred Hampton, played with both power and vulnerability by Daniel Kaluuya, is a rising star in the Black Panther movement, turning the Chicago chapter into one of the leading faces of the movement. To FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (a heavily transformed Martin Sheen), the Black Panther movement, with such socialist ideas like free education and health care, represents a bigger threat than communism. In order to bring down the new messiah, he needs a Judas - enter Bill O'Neal.
LaKeith Stanfield plays the turncoat - a young man who is picked up for impersonating an FBI agent so he can boost cars. Real FBI agent Roy Mitchell (a calm yet stone-cold Jesse Plemons) sees …
Rating of
3/4
The first great movie of 2021 folks!
Matthew Brady - wrote on 03/01/2021
“I’m free.”
Out of all the ‘Civil Rights Movement’ movies I’ve seen over the years, I honestly believe that this might be the best one. Without falling into any traditional biopics tropes that could easily dramatize its history. It instead focuses on a story about fear, violence, betrayal, and loyalty. It is heavily empathise from different perspectives; it’s the reason why it was more effective.
In the movie, whenever someone gets shot, beaten, or just hurt, you feel it. The sound work, directing, and the performers manage to make it believable. Very brutal and realistic. However, what surprised me the most is how suspenseful the movie was at times, with the payoff either being soul crushing or shocking.
All thanks to Shaka King’s directing and Sean Bobbitt’s …
