| Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: February 12, 2021 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
46
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Feb 12, 2021
Featuring terrific performances from Get Out alumnus, Daniel Kaluuya as the young revolutionary Hampton, and LaKeith Stanfield as FBI informant, William O’Neal, the film is a revelation from King, a director, who until now, was known for his television work and the 2013 comedy, Newlyweeds.
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Feb 11, 2021
Feb 10, 2021
This is a throwback movie in the best sense of the term, asking the audience to consider the not-too-distant past of anti-Black racism as prologue to its similarly murderous present. It’s also a return to a brand of muscular, serious-minded filmmaking that has been virtually forgotten in recent years.
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Feb 1, 2021
Led by sensational performances from Daniel Kaluuya as Hampton and LaKeith Stanfield as William O'Neal, the FBI informant who infiltrated his inner circle, this is a scalding account of oppression and revolution, coercion and betrayal, rendered more shocking by the undiminished currency of its themes.
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Feb 1, 2021
Black Messiah's center of gravity has to be a Hampton you can't look away from, and Kaluuya — alternately raw, tender, and incendiary — duly electrifies every scene he's in. Righteous as the road may be, his Fred hasn't been flattened to fit the broad Wikipedia-worn contours of a martyr or a hero; he lives and breathes, down to the last indelible frame.
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Feb 11, 2021
Judas and the Black Messiah represents a disciplined, impassioned effort to bring clarity to a volatile moment, to dispense with the sentimentality and revisionism that too often cloud movies about the ’60s and about the politics of race. It’s fascinating in its own right, and even more so when looked at alongside other recent movies.
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Feb 1, 2021
The story is infuriating — not in the way King presents it, not at all, but in its details. The manipulation of justice is heartbreaking. Though sadness isn't what you'll most likely feel while watching. Anger is. The betrayal in Judas and the Black Messiah extends far beyond the title character, making it an even greater tragedy.
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Feb 1, 2021
Magnetic with righteous fury, Kaluuya plays Hampton with steel-plated conviction that has no time for half-measures. The gifted actor maintains a strict demeanor in scenes speaking truth to the people but a more calibrated mien in the ones exhibiting Hampton’s diplomatic skills, like a meeting with the Crowns, a fellow revolutionary group.
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Feb 10, 2021
The Film StageFeb 2, 2021
Despite a few missteps including its ambiguous treatment of female comrades in the film’s first two acts––including Hampton’s all-too-brief courtship with Debrah Johnson (played by Dominique Fishback)––Judas and the Black Messiah is mostly an uncompromising and riveting character study exploring power and oppression.
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The Observer (UK)Mar 16, 2021
It’s a credit to Stanfield that he manages to keep these complex contradictions alive throughout his performance, capturing perfectly the uneasy manner that O’Neal exhibited on camera, his eyes darting anxiously as he attempts to read his surroundings, his manner a mix of fearful, furtive and oddly forceful.
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Feb 1, 2021
Judas is an explosion of pent-up plotting, as if the film industry itself would only have this one chance to make a film about the Panther movement and it all has to be told in one go. Hopefully, this is not to be the case. As this film rises up to an unthinkable conclusion, there is clearly so much more to tell, and, as always, to learn.
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Feb 12, 2021
What's lacking, mostly, is a tighter focus on what is, admittedly, a complicated story to do justice. The issues the film depicts nevertheless resonate on multiple levels, from the current state of race relations to the way the government dealt with this perceived domestic threat, without packing quite the wallop that the material suggests.
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Movie NationFeb 3, 2021
In a banner year for African American representation in front of and behind the camera, King looks like a filmmaker who will get more trips to the plate, more chances to touch’em all. Stanfield is already a rising star and in-demand talent. And after his Messianic turn here, Kaluuya’s star is in the ascent and his phone — if there’s any justice in Hollywood — has to be ringing off the hook. He lets us see what his contemporaries saw in Hampton, and he makes us wonder just who he might have become.
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The PlaylistFeb 1, 2021
King comes so close to rendering Hampton’s life and legacy anew for a younger generation. But for all of the film’s eloquent crafts and the audacious performances from a deep ensemble, which includes an under-sung Dominique Thorne as Black Panther member Judy Harmon, Judas And The Black Messiah doesn’t fully encapsulate either its Judas or its messiah.
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Feb 16, 2021Screen RantFeb 25, 2021
The film has its fair share of intoxicatingly gripping moments and watching Kaluuya as Hampton is visceral and empowering. Unfortunately, it never feels like the story gets out of its own way enough to flourish, nor does it explore the complexities needed to emphasize and humanize the characters in the way that it should.
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Feb 4, 2021
Judas and the Black Messiah is missing that deeper personal aspect, some sense of the emotional force yoking O’Neal and Hampton together, dragging them toward ruin. The film is resonant regardless. Still, there’s such an opportunity presented here—to see these two sterling actors really working in harmony—that goes frustratingly unseized. As is, Judas and the Black Messiah is richer and more engaging than a standard biopic, but is not quite the Shakespearean tragedy of double allegiances and backstabbing that it could have been.
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