Exciting, fact-based drama about a home-grown political assassination against the head of the Black Panther Party, encouraged if not precisely ordered by J. Edgar Hoover at a race-phobic ‘60s FBI. Led by high-level ‘inside man’ Bill O’Neal, pressured by a FBI ‘handler’ (Jesse Plemons) into the assignment to keep out of jail on various charges, the Fed is able to follow the militants' every move. Or nearly so since O’Neal becomes a conflicted man, something of a true believer under the friendship/tutelage of Panther evangelist Fred Hampton. Writer director Shaka King pulls off a neat stylistic trick, giving the film a Blaxploitation vibe that effectively draws on period flavor, much helped by cinematographer Sean Bobbitt’s use of color. (Less so by Martin Sheen’s starchy J. Edgar Hoover makeup mask.) And if King’s action chops as director are currently ahead of his narrative instincts (a scorecard might be nice at times), he compensates with personal details, especially in the relationship between Daniel Kaluuya’s Hampton and eventual wife Deborah (Dominique Fishback). Involving character complications largely missing from LaKieth Stanfield’s turncoat, already at some disadvantage next to the echoes of Yaphet Kotto which acolytes of that great actor will see in Kaluuya.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: I know there are various contractual, financial & status rationales for these things, but 17 producers for this relatively modest film? Seventeen?
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: The recent MLK/FBI documentary goes a long way to confirming what’s seen here. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/01/mlkfbi-2020.html
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