Movie reviews: Just a decent guy doing his job, or a racist who secretly thrives on hatred?
Jesse Plemons and LaKeith Stanfield in Judas and the Black Messiah
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In the late 1960s, J Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen) declared Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) ‘the single greatest threat’ to America. What Hoover meant, of course, was that the revolutionary Black Panther threatened his perception of what America should be: in (15A), Shaka King delivers a vision of what America might have been, had ‘Chairman Fred’ not been betrayed by the FBI informant Bill O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield). The bare bones of the plot is a matter of historical record, as the car thief O’Neal is recruited by FBI agent Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons) to infiltrate the Black Panthers and undermine Hampton, which in itself provides the movie with its narrative tension: where Hampton is happy to accept O’Neal on his own merits, his fellow Panthers — most notably Judy (Dominique Thorne) — are deeply suspicious of O’Neal’s rapid rise through the ranks. Where the film really scores, however, is in King’s exploration of the era’s political backdrop, and especially Hampton’s doomed bid to unite various factions against the Nixon administration and all that it represents. Daniel Kaluuya is superb here, delivering a wonderfully charismatic Fred Hampton, a visionary man of the people (‘Where there’s people, there’s power.’) who is prickly, pragmatic and unabashed in his belief that revolution comes from the barrel of a gun. LaKeith Stanfield is also impressive as the traitorous O’Neal, his performance brilliantly protean as O’Neal adapts his persona to the needs and expectations of whatever company he happens to find himself in, while Jesse Plemons is equally hard to pin down as the FBI agent Mitchell, a stolid family man who may just be a decent guy doing his job, or else a racist who secretly thrives on fomenting hatred. A powerful, lyrical account of a violent, tragic revolutionary, Judas and the Black Messiah is a timely and gripping drama. (internet release)
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(18s) stars Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Christian, a Copenhagen police detective determined to take revenge when his partner Lars (Søren Malling) is left for dead when they are called to investigate a domestic dispute. Christian quickly establishes that Lars’ assailant is Ezra Tarzi (Eriq Ebouaney), a Libyan-born Danish citizen who is a Special Forces veteran; unfortunately, he also discovers that Ezra is being hunted by CIA agent, Joe Martin (Guy Pearce), who believes Ezra will lead him to the ISIS mastermind Salah Al-Din (Mohammed Azaay), who is currently wreaking havoc throughout Europe. Written by Petter Skavlan and directed by Brian De Palma, Domino is a thriller that suffers by comparison with De Palma’s career highs (Carrie, Scarface, Carlito’s Way). The emphasis here is on pace at the expense of character development — the story sprints from Copenhagen to Brussels, and on to the south of Spain — and matters aren’t helped by the rough-and-ready quality of the acting, with Coster-Waldau particularly stiff as he delivers his terse, monosyllabic take on the clichéd cop: Christian is an emotionally damaged ex-boozer who doesn’t do well with authority. Guy Pearce does have a lot of fun with his cynical CIA agent, all cynical smarm and Southern drawl, and Eriq Ebouaney brings a wild-eyed intensity to his role of a man confronted by impossible choices, but otherwise it’s hard to escape the feeling that the players are so many stock characters being shuffled around a board. Where the film scores is in its relentless pursuit of the next twist, showdown or shootout, its pounding momentum almost compensating for the unnecessarily brutal violence and below-par performances. (Amazon Prime)
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Thirty years on from his adventures in New York, Prince Akeem (Eddie Murphy) retraces his steps in (12A), this due to political developments at home in Zamunda that oblige Akeem to recognise his illegitimate son and heir to the throne, Lavelle Junson (Jermaine Fowler). That said, and the title notwithstanding, very little of the story takes place in America: most of the sequel plays out in Zamunda, with Akeem and his advisor Semmi (Arsenio Hall) attempting to marry off Lavelle to Princess Bopoto (Teyana Taylor) of the neighbouring kingdom Nexdoria (!), and thus persuade the rampaging General Izzi (Wesley Snipes) to abandon his plan to annex Zamunda. All of which sounds like the kind of preposterously zany yarn the Marx Brothers might have converted into comedy gold, but Craig Brewer’s movie is largely an exercise in retreading, with the heir-in-waiting Lavelle essentially reprising the character of Akeem from three decades ago as he refuses to play along with his father’s scheme. There are some giggles to be had along the way, and fun to be had playing spot-the-cameo (James Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman, Trevor Noah, Gladys Knight) but Coming 2 America is largely a self-plagiarising exercise in nostalgia. (Amazon Prime)
