Judas and the Black Messiah review – an intricate dance of deceit
A haunting past echoes across Shaka King’s gripping historical drama, pitting brother against brother as greed, equality, love, and inhumanity stir an already full pot.
It seems that no matter how history plays out, we always find a way to retell it. Sharing these stories with younger and fresher generations continues its legacy, hoping that the cautionary tale can somehow benefit the future. But what about all the dramatization, the countless people who have been chalked up to an amalgamated character or, even worse, something they never were? Even if a documentary tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but, how many stories are left out of those precious two hours? Judas and the Black Messiah is a human experience, one which shows the past instead of regaling it, yet I still wonder where its focus lies.
It is 1968 and America is asserting its naïve dominance as the global capital of freedom whilst its own streets are riddled with poverty, power-asserting police, and a government that convinces itself that it is all part of their greater good. Somewhere in the middle of all that, young Bill O’Neil (LaKeith Stanfield) is impersonating an FBI agent and using the fake...