Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah is a thoroughly compelling biopic told through the structure of a political thriller, giving us a more nuanced, complicated, and honest look at the Black Panther Party than most mainstream narrative films have been willing to attempt. In splitting the narrative’s focus between Fred Hampton’s work with Black Panther Party and Bill O’Neill’s work with the FBI to surveil Hampton, King and his screenwriters have almost created two separate films that overlap and merge as the characters’ lives becomes more intertwined. It’s a technique that works surprisingly well, giving us the tender and powerful moments of a Hampton biopic while we watch him form the Rainbow Coalition and fall in love. And in O’Neill’s story, we’re given the beats of a political thriller as we watch a young man in over his head, manipulated and coerced by his handlers to make choices that will haunt him the rest of his life. The two central performances are stellar – Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield each bring such a different and unique energy to their respective roles that keeps us fully invested in both characters’ arcs. King’s use of archival material at the beginning of the film is highly effective, especially in the way it transitions us into the main plot, showing the ways that images of Black solidarity are immediately threatening to white authorities. Like a few other films that have been released in the last few years, the film’s depiction of police racism and brutality is a necessary corrective to Hollywood’s near-constant glorification of the profession. There’s also a timeliness in the way the film shows how uncomfortable it is for the established powers that be (as well as white, paternalistic liberals) when the Black community (or any BIPOC community) demands equality rather than waiting to be granted equality out of beneficence. It’s a powerful film – hopefully just one of many necessary correctives to decades of popular cinema’s demonization of the Black Panthers and the Black Power movement.