Judas and the Black Messiah (4K UHD Review)
- Review Date: Jun 19, 2025
- Format: 4K Ultra HD
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Director
Shaka KingRelease Date(s)
2021 (February 11, 2025)Studio(s)
Warner Bros. Pictures (Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A-
- Extras Grade: D
Review
[Editor’s Note: As noted below, a very small amount of discs that were initially shipped out to customers contained errors that have now been corrected. If you purchased this release and it contains 5.1 audio and not Dolby Atmos, you’re eligible for a replacement disc. To receive instructions on how to acquire one, e-mail Movie Zyng (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) with your original receipt, even if you purchased the disc elsewhere, and they will assist you.]
Judas and the Black Messiah provides vivid proof of the fact that while progress is inevitable given a long enough timeline, if there’s one unchangeable law of human nature, it’s that mankind will always resist change. “The only thing constantly changing is change, and it’s always for the worse,” Lou Reed bellowed in his 2003 song Change. Of course, Reed was a social progressive and his song is actually referring to aging and the inevitable decay of the body, but “change is always for the worse” has been a consistent mantra throughout human history. The social upheaval of the changes that were brought about by the Civil Rights movement resulted in a backlash by those who virulently opposed that kind of change, which reinvigorated white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. It also brought increased attention from the government, especially from J. Edgar Hoover, the notorious FBI director who opposed change in any and all of its forms—and Hoover was willing to resist change by any means necessary.
Between 1956 and 1971, The FBI under Hoover ran a covert (and highly illegal) program that they dubbed COINTELPRO. The goal was to disrupt and discredit any organization that they deemed to be subversive. While that included feminists, leftists, Communists, environmentalists, pacifists, and even white supremacist groups like the Klan, they put a special emphasis on people of color. That included influential leaders of the Civil Rights movement like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, but the FBI cast an even wider net to include the likes of the American Indian Movement, labor unions like the United Farm Workers, and the Brown Berets. Yet it was Black Nationalist movements like the Black Panther party that really drew Hoover’s ire, and no tactics were off the table, however unethical, immoral, and illegal that they may have been.
Black Panther founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale were obvious targets, but the FBI also went after regional figures like Fred Hampton. He served as chairman of the Illinois chapter, but his biggest sin in the eyes of the Feds was that he also helped to found the Rainbow Coalition, a multiracial group that tied the Panthers together with other organizations like the Young Patriots and the Young Lords. Divide & conquer has always been one of the most effective tactics in order for entrenched systems to maintain their grip on power, so the idea of various oppressed groups banding together was a bridge too far for the FBI. After all, when people of different stripes actually work together, they can bring about change. So, Hampton had to go—and the same government that had mailed a blackmail package to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. suggesting that he kill himself before his “filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation” had no qualms about doing anything to make that happen.
That’s the backdrop to Judas and the Black Messiah, which traces the tumultuous rise of Fred Hampton and his tragic fall at the hands of the FBI—and yes, his probable premeditated murder by Chicago police officers as well. A biopic about Hampton had been in the works for years, with competing pitches from writers Kenny & Keith Lucas and Will Benson under consideration. When director Shaka King came on board, both projects were united with the all three writers (as well as King) contributing the final script. Yet it still built on the hook from the Lucas Brothers: framing Hampton’s story as a political thriller, with the FBI and their key informant William “Bill” O’Neal serving as the audience’s point of entry into the Panthers. That threatened to invert the narrative somewhat, with O’Neal taking the lead and Hampton potentially becoming a supporting character in his own story—it’s right in the title, after all—but King and his collaborators managed to strike a good balance between the two. The key is that unlike Jesus Christ Superstar, which presented Judas as a disillusioned true believer, Judas and the Black Messiah leaves no doubt that O’Neal was a reluctant outsider from the start.
O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield) is a petty car thief in Chicago who is arrested after posing as a federal officer. He’s recruited by FBI agent Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemmons), who agrees to have the charges dropped if O’Neal will infiltrate the Illinois Black Panther party, posing as one of their own, in order to get close to Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya). In a savage irony, a man who pretended to be a federal officer ends up working for the Feds while posing as a part of the counterculture. O’Neal’s rise within the ranks of the Black Panthers and his complicity in the raid that took Hampton’s life forms the core of Judas and the Black Messiah. The film does trace Hampton’s own rise as a leader of the party, his formation of the Rainbow Coalition, his arrest and imprisonment over dubious charges, and his relationship with Deborah Johnson, aka Akua Njeri (Dominique Fishback). It also follows the parallel story of Mitchell’s work within the FBI under Hoover (Martin Sheen). Yet it’s still O’Neal who provides the hook that holds all of those disparate elements together.
Judas and the Black Messiah skillfully blends fact with fiction in order to maintain a compelling story for contemporary audiences, only occasionally dipping into hyperbole. (There’s no evidence that Hoover actually said that the Panthers were the “greatest single threat to our national security, more than the Chinese, even more than the Russians,” although he did say that they posed the “greatest threat to the internal security of the country” among the various “violence-prone black extremist groups.”) It also retains some commendable ambiguity regarding the disputed events on December 4, 1969 when the Chicago Police Department raided Hampton’s apartment, firing 80-99 shots and killing both Hampton and Mark Clark. The police maintained that the Panthers shot first, but the only shot that they fired was a reflexive one into the ceiling by Clark after the police had shot him in the chest first. Hampton’s wounds weren’t even defensive: he was asleep in bed after having apparently been drugged.
While some of the exact details have always been in dispute, what’s clear is that O’Neal was the one who provided a layout of the apartment to the FBI, which passed it on to the Chicago PD, and that he gave them the tip that the Panthers were in possession of guns. He also may have been the one who slipped barbiturates into Hampton’s drink. Regardless, he left the apartment prior to the raid, so he probably knew full well what was going to happen. His involvement wasn’t revealed until years later, forcing him to enter the Witness Protection Program for a time. Judas and the Black Messiah opens with a recreation of a 1989 interview that he did for the PBS documentary Eyes on the Prize II, where he denied having drugged Hampton. Before the episode aired, he ran out into the middle of traffic and was killed by a passing car. He had long been wracked with guilt over what he did, and the incident was ruled a suicide. Appropriately enough, Judas and the Black Messiah closes with footage of the real O’Neal interview, as well as a reminder that the federal government eventually paid out a $1.85 million settlement to the survivors of the Chicago raid and the families of the victims.
Reminders are always in order, because progress never occurs without resistance to the change that it provokes. The Civil Rights era is over, but the struggle continues, and so does the opposition to it. Entrenched systems still benefit from divide & conquer, and the government is no less willing to violate the law and the Constitution in order to obstruct the path of progress. In 1905, philosopher George Santayana wrote the famed aphorism that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." 120 years later, we still haven’t learned that lesson. Judas and the Black Messiah serves as a potent reminder of the price that some of us have had to pay for progress, and as a stark warning of what can happen when we allow the government to violate civil rights while resisting that change. The film was released in 2021, but four years later, we still haven’t learned its lessons, either.
Cinematographer Sean Bobbitt captured Judas and the Black Messiah at 4.5K resolution (in ARRIRAW format) using ARRI Alexa LF and Mini LF cameras with spherical ARRI DNA lenses. The film was completed as a 4K Digital Intermediate, with the full-frame image cropped during post-production to a 2.39:1 aspect ratio. While Bobbitt elected not to shoot the film in anamorphic, the DNA lenses still had a drop-off around the edges that gave the cropped image an anamorphic feel. That was part of the period look that he and King were trying to achieve. As he explained to British Cinematographer, they were echoing the look of Kodak Ektachrome and Kodachrome stocks, with their high contrast and well-saturated primary colors (although the DNA lenses softened that somewhat).
Warner Bros. initially released Judas and the Black Messiah on Blu-ray only, and while it took them a few years to upgrade it to 4K, the results were worth the wait. Despite some of the intentional softness and grittiness in some shots, there’s a noticeable uptick in fine detail compared to the Blu-ray, but it’s the extra detail in the contrast range that’s really impressive. To be blunt, Judas and the Black Messiah is filled with a lot of dark skin, dark costuming, and dark environments, all of which is better delineated here thanks to the High Dynamic Range grade (both Dolby Vision and HDR10 are included on the disc). Details that threatened to wash out in the Blu-ray version are now clearer, but not so clear that they lose the shadowy look that Bobbitt worked hard to create. There’s a strong emphasis on greens throughout the film, from the muted tones of the army fatigues to brighter backgrounds, and all of the subtle variations are reproduced accurately. Bobbitt and King carefully placed greens, blues, and yellows throughout the frame in order to enhance the color depth in the image and prevent the darker flesh tones from looking monochromatic, and that effect comes across much better in 4K with HDR than it did in 1080p SDR. It’s a dramatic upgrade.
Audio is offered in English Dolby Atmos, with optional English SDH subtitles. While it’s not necessarily the most aggressive of mixes, there’s plenty of subtle but effective ambient effects that add to the immersion even in the quietest scenes. That subtlety was clearly intentional, because it draws a sharp contrast to the moments of violence. Unlike contemporary action films that tend to be deafeningly loud from beginning to end, the soundtrack for Judas and the Black Messiah is powerfully dynamic. When the gunfights do break out, the sound of gunfire is shockingly loud in comparison to everything that preceded it—almost painfully loud, but that’s exactly how it should sound. It’s easy to become inured to violence in modern films, but the sound design of Judas and the Black Messiah helps to keep it just as uncomfortable as it should be. Even the music adds to the disquiet, with the dissonant jazz horns in the score by Craig Harris and Mark Isham being a crucial part of the film’s textures.
While Judas and the Black Messiah was released theatrically in Dolby Atmos, the Blu-ray only offered 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. Unfortunately, many of the initial pressings of the UHD also omitted the Atmos track, but Warner Bros. made a running change during production to include it. So, it’s possible that some of the discs that omit the Atmos track are still out in the wild. Fortunately, Warner Bros. is offering a replacement program for anyone who has the incorrect audio—see the details in the editor’s note above.
The Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment 4K Ultra HD release of Judas and the Black Messiah is UHD only—like most of their current releases, it doesn’t include a Blu-ray copy, and there’s no Digital Code or slipcover, either. The following extras are included, both of them in HD:
- Fred Hampton for the People (7:49)
- Unexpected Betrayal (9:21)
It’s the same two brief featurettes that were on the Blu-ray, both of which include interviews with the likes of Shaka King, Ryan Coogler, Daniel Kaluuya, Lakeith Stanfield, Jesse Plemmons, and more. Fred Hampton for the People focuses on Hampton’s story and the process of adapting it for the screen. Unexpected Betrayal turns its lens on William O’Neal. No new extras, unfortunately, but at least everything is carried forward from the Blu-ray. Regardless, Judas and the Black Messiah is the kind of film that stands tall on its own, with or without any extras, and the substantially improved picture quality (with the original Atmos audio) is the real draw here. Whether or not that’s enough to make it worth the upgrade from Blu-ray is up to you, but if you’ve held off on picking up the film in hopes of an eventual 4K release, well, there’s no time like the present.
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).