It had been nearly three months since my last 2020 Academy Award nominee viewing, so I moved another up in the queue. Why this one? I think the title got me curious. It certainly wasn't director Shaka King, whose few other works I'd never heard of, but Ryan Coogler as a producer lent some promise.
In '68 Chicago, Bill O'Neal (LaKeith Stanfield) has been impersonating an FBI agent in order to steal what he claims was reported stolen. When he gets in trouble with the real FBI, Agent Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons) gives him an alternative to the usual consequences: infiltrating the local Black Panthers (not the other kind associated with Coogler) and spying on popular Chairman Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya). O'Neal also makes occasional unsuccessful attempts to incite crimes among the Panthers, unless he's merely playing up his own extremism to avoid suspicion.
Boy, and I thought The Trial of the Chicago 7 (which includes Hampton in a less focal capacity) felt angry and profanity-laced. This production entered the editing stage months before George Floyd became a household name, so I don't know how much it was designed to capitalize on modern perceptions of police as enemies of Black people, but the subsequent title change certainly suggests how we're supposed to feel about O'Neal and Hampton. Granted, calling Hampton a messiah stems from a memo by J. Edgar Hoover, portrayed herein by Martin Sheen with even less likability than his role in The Dead Zone.
For his part, O'Neal isn't loathsome. He starts out apolitical and develops definite misgivings about what he's doing. The Bible does not lay out any motive for Judas Iscariot besides avarice, whereas O'Neal has a more compelling reason to continue longer than he wants: the threat of more than six years in prison. Personally, I relate to him a little better than to Hampton, whose rhetoric sometimes goes too far. Hampton claims not to mean it literally, but we see a fair amount of Panthers and other rebels committing violence I'd never approve, even given what some of their opponents do.
The most prominent woman herein is Deborah Johnson (Dominique Fishback), who approaches Hampton hoping to improve his speeches and then falls in love with him. She might actually be my favorite character, partly because she writes and champions poetry. (Kudos to Fishback for writing the one onscreen poem herself.) Kind of cute for a revolutionary, and she doesn't shy away from challenging Hampton when she feels he needs it.
Good luck finding a respectable White character, tho. Mitchell seems decent for a while, but either he gets worse under the influence of Hoover, or he just shows more of his true colors the further along the project goes. Hampton does make allies of the Young Patriots Organization, but their Confederate Flag backdrop isn't the only factor to paint them as likely lowlifes. I'm not surprised to learn that none of the film producers were White. I was OK with racially consistent vilification in Get Out because that was playful; this story is serious enough that it annoys me a tad.
With all the inflamed passion poured into JatBM, I had to look into its accuracy. From what I gather, the biggest deviations from reality were combinations of different people, groups, or events, evidently for artistic rather than propagandist purposes. If anything points to bias, it's in the insinuation of moments that have been disputed but by no means disproven. A lot happens in the story, and history is hazy on many details. I don't blame the filmmakers for going the more dramatic route when in doubt.
From a purely cinematic standpoint, it's pretty exciting. O'Neal rarely comes anywhere close to blowing his cover, but there's no shortage of tension, and I'd almost add an "action" tag. The pacing must be good too; it didn't feel like 126 minutes to me.
I get the impression I'll like JatBM better in the future, when the zeitgeist simmers down. For now, I put it maybe slightly ahead of TTotC7.
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