Released on February 12th of 2021, Judas and the Black Messiah is a revolutionary film. Truthfully, I, as a viewer, was awestruck. The grit, raw emotion and suburb actors and actresses made this film phenomenal.

Since this is a personal editorial, my opinion is that this is a top movie of 2021. Actors Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Standfield captured each moment perfectly and exceeded the expectations I had coming into the film. Kaluuya gives speeches within the film which made each hair on my arm stand up.

Judas and the Black Messiah was inspired by the true events involving the Black Panther Party in Chicago, Ill.  within the late 1960s. Frank Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) takes a leadership role within the Party after the deaths of inspirations Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Hampton–a phenomenal speaker—and begins to form the multi-racial Rainbow Coalition to fight against racial prejudices and attacks. However, Hampton is unaware one of his right-hand men, William ‘Bill’ O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield) is an informant for the FBI. Thus, the analogy of Judas within the title of the film.

Now being a previous high school student in Illinois, the story of Fred Hampton was known within my history classes. And honestly, I was not expecting much going into this film. I knew how the story went, so I was not expecting to become so emotionally invested in these characters and the story I had heard countless times before. However, invested is exactly what I became. I laughed, cried and couldn’t pull my eyes off the screen. I believed in this story, in the revolutionaries it represented and the history it captured.

The one and the only complaint I had with this film is Standfield’s character is supposed to be seventeen years old but is played by an actor who is almost thirty. A part of O’Neal’s historical narrative is being a young kid who was forced to choose these tremendous life-altering decisions without fully being a mature adult at the time. It was difficult to imagine this frightened and nervous young adult when he is being showcased as a thirty-year-old. However, this one aspect of the movie did not distract from its overall perfection.

This film is in theaters and available to view on HBO Max. And however you would feel comfortable, I beg the readers of this article to please, go watch this movie. It is breathtaking, heartbreaking and an overall masterpiece that needs to be seen.

Article by Gabriella Wuller