Drama
Judas And The Black Messiah (15)
Review: Anchored by scintillating, Oscar-nominated performances from Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield, Judas And The Black Messiah is a gripping dramatisation of an FBI counterintelligence operation to infiltrate the Black Panther Party in 1960s Chicago. Themes of racial injustice, betrayal and collusion, which run deep in a muscular script co-written by director Shaka King and Will Berson, strike discomfiting chords in the current climate and underline the short distance travelled since the shooting of 21-year-old party chairman Fred Hampton during a predawn raid.
Words are weaponised on screen in the battle for hearts and minds. While FBI director J Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen) snarls disdain for The Black Panthers as “the single greatest threat to national security”, Hampton (Kaluuya) issues a rallying cry to mirror police violence by shedding the blood of men in uniform: “Kill ’em all, get complete satisfaction!” London-born actor Kaluuya scorches every pixel of the screen as he delivers Hampton’s ferocious oratory. Black and white stock footage of clashes between white police officers and black citizens lights a fuse on tension between the two communities, which detonates with full force in the film’s suspenseful second act.
In 1968 Chicago, 18-year-old petty criminal William “Bill” O’Neal (Stanfield) confidently wields a fake FBI badge to compel a group of black men to give him the keys to a Pontiac, which he claims has been reported stolen. Flashing blue lights interrupt his frantic getaway. At Cook County Jail, FBI special agent Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons) coolly informs O’Neal that he is facing 18 months in prison for stealing a car and five years for impersonating a federal officer.
Mitchell offers to dismiss the charges if O’Neal is willing to turn informant and infiltrate the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party commanded by charismatic chairman Fred Hampton. O’Neal reluctantly agrees and he wins the confidence of Hampton’s girlfriend Deborah Johnson (Dominique Fishback) and Black Panther members Judy Harmon (Dominique Thorne), Bobby Rush (Darrell Britt-Gibson) and Jake Winters (Algee Smith). Hampton’s rising popularity is a thorn in the side of J Edgar Hoover and he orders Mitchell to apply intolerable pressure to O’Neal to “neutralise” the threat.
Judas And The Black Messiah is a stylish and engrossing distillation of inglorious American history, which resulted in a 47 million dollar lawsuit alleging a conspiracy to assassinate Hampton. King’s assured direction makes light work of the two-hour running time, illuminating O’Neal’s anguished odyssey under the suffocating yoke of the FBI. Production designer Sam Lisenco and costume designer Charlese Antoinette Jones steep the powerhouse cast in impressive period detail as Hampton rouses his disenfranchised brothers and sisters with the defiant battle cry: “I am a revolutionary!” Citizens meet his rhetoric with fist-pumping fervour and we respond in impassioned kind.
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Thriller
The Little Things (15)
Review: During the methodical hunt for a serial killer in writer-director John Lee Hancock’s crime thriller, a tormented cop with hunched shoulders and haunted eyes delivers two strikingly similar speeches about vigilance in the pursuit of justice. “The little things are important. The little things get you caught,” he solemnly intones, pausing with dramatic effect to acknowledge the film’s intentionally ambiguous title. Ironically, it’s the big things like a messy plot and the jarring performances of Oscar winners Denzel Washington, Rami Malek and Jared Leto which undermine this old-fashioned tour of the mean streets of early 1990s Los Angeles.
Hancock originally penned the script in 1993, the year after The Silence Of The Lambs raised multiple glasses of Chianti at the Oscars and sparked a slew of well-intentioned imitators. Dust still lingers in the air of his slow-burning narrative, which gives Leto free rein to ramp up the creepiness on a misfit prime suspect to the point of laughability. The most urgent repairs to Hancock’s picture are required in a dishevelled final act that seemingly careens into the same grim territory as Se7en (released in 1995) only to take a deeply dissatisfying detour at the last second.
Kern County Deputy Sheriff Joe “Deke” Deacon (Washington) reluctantly returns to his old stomping ground in Los Angeles to collect evidence for an active case. It has been five years since Deke left the LA County Sheriff’s Department following a meltdown, which saw him suspended from the force, served with divorce papers and undergo a triple heart bypass in the space of six hellish months. He arrives in the middle of a press conference led by his replacement, Detective Jim Baxter (Malek), who is on the trail of a suspect with a similar MO to the unsolved case that tipped Deke over the edge.
“We haven’t been under this much scrutiny since the Night Stalker,” Captain Carl Farris (Terry Kinney) warns Baxter. With the FBI threatening to seize control of the case, Baxter invites Deke to join him and colleagues Jamie Estrada (Natalie Morales) and Sal Rizoli (Chris Bauer) as they work the latest crime scene. Deke’s valuable insight leads the task force to disturbed electrical appliance repairman Albert Sparma (Leto). However, secrets from Deke’s past jeopardise the likelihood of a secure conviction.
Grounded by Washington’s understated and emotionally textured performance, The Little Things lacks nail-biting tension and fully realised, nuanced characters. Malek is caught squarely between the extremes of his two co-stars and seems unsure where to pitch his portrayal of a family man scorched by a burning desire to achieve justice for the victims and their grieving families. Frustratingly, the answers he seeks – and us too – are not entirely forthcoming.
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Comedy
Locked Down (15)
Review: Crime pays for a feuding couple in Doug Liman’s light-fingered comedy drama, which was hastily written and filmed in London during the second lockdown of the Covid pandemic. The rewards for us, however, are less bountiful. Screenwriter Steven Knight’s ability to edit verbose dialogue evidently went into quarantine because his lead characters, a long-term couple who split just as England enforces social distancing, are incapable of communicating succinctly or realistically. For example, a casual inquiry about how one half of the duelling lovebirds is feeling elicits a blast of verbal diarrhoea that likens his mood to “the prison of psychological hell-change, the flames of burning aloneness, the screw of isolation until you can’t tell what is your body and what is the furniture”.
It is difficult to understand what might have attracted these prosaic pontificators to each other or how a hare-brained scheme to steal a diamond might magically get the relationship back on track. More than 15 years after Liman drew humour from marital discord in Mr & Mrs Smith, the New York-born filmmaker struggles to make mirth from the “suffering” of two people “trapped” in a swanky three-storey London townhouse with a garden. Sir Ben Kingsley, Ben Stiller and Mindy Kaling dial in fleeting supporting performances on Zoom to give passing reference to the outside world without acknowledging the true devastation being wrought by the virus.
Ex-con and aspiring poet Paxton (Ejiofor) lives in the capital with American girlfriend Linda (Hathaway), who is chief executive of the London branch of Miracore Media. “We’re only together because we’re in the same house,” sneers Linda between generous sloshes of white wine as the relationship moulders. Paxton is furloughed from his job as a delivery van driver while Linda has the unfortunate task of announcing compulsory redundancies to staff via Zoom.
In the midst of their downward spiral, Paxton and Linda realise their respective jobs will collide on a Saturday night at Harrods as the department store removes valuable stock from its floors. The couple hatches a daredevil plan to steal the Harris Diamond, worth three million pounds, and replace it with a replica as the glittering stone is sent for safe keeping to a vault in New York… presuming they can dupe Harrods’ head of security (Stephen Merchant).
Locked Down feels like an experiment in filmmaking under duress, which focused too hard on whether it could achieve its bold ambitions without considering whether it should. Hathaway and Ejiofor share inert screen chemistry and their characters’ best moments are when they are apart, furiously banging saucepans to honour NHS heroes or dancing wildly to the beat of Stand And Deliver by Adam & The Ants. The heist is reserved for the final half hour and will not be earning the begrudging admiration of Danny Ocean and his associates.
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