This is very, very good. Maybe a little messy with its scope, but one of the angriest studio films I’ve seen since maybe “Selma”? Everyone in it is excellent. Throw “Chicago 7” in the trash and nominate this for everything.
I'm not as well-versed in Fred Hampton as others, but the story being about an informant selling someone out is right in the title.
If anything it's making me ensure that I watch the movie but also gain a better understanding of the historically accurate information surrounding the subjects. I admittedly has no real knowledge about Fred Hampton and his situation, so it will be a "viewing with an asterisk" situation.
If anyone wants to read about what actually happened, the “Assassination of Fred Hampton” book by Jeffrey Haas is great. Haas was one of the lawyers who actually represented Hampton and other Black Panthers, and a huge chunk of the book is about their civil lawsuit against the Chicago PD that took around a decade after Hampton was killed to resolve. He also goes into other Black Panther cases he worked on at the time. I don’t recall him talking too much about the snitch that this movie is about, except for the fact that he was clearly the source for how the PD/FBI learned so much
I think its safe to say that Hollywood is incredibly limited by capitalist design or whatever at depicting revolutionary figures and movements.
Man the oscars are really gonna go all in on The Trial of Chicago 7 over this aren't they. Like Green Book over Blackkklansman
See I think that movie is stronger than people give it credit for. It's about a black cop who thinks he can change things from the inside, all while his activist girlfriend tells him it's impossible, that liberation can't come from working within the system, and the ending of the movie is literally the KKK burning a cross outside their apartment and a cut to the Charlottesville riots. It draws a direct line from the events of the film to today, and how however many "good" cops there might have been who have felt they could change things, white nationalists are arguably in more power than ever.
nah man. can't agree. it makes someone going undercover to the the black panthers look like a hero and that bomb thing never happened. it was the feds who took down the panthers, its the feds who push white supremacy.
The bomb thing is taking creative liberty for a tense cinematic climax so take whatever issue with that you will, but the movie is pretty explicit that it’s “hero” didn’t change anything and white supremacy has only grown in the following decades. In the final scene Laura Harrier’s character is still appalled that Stallworth is going to continue being a cop, and while they’re arguing about it is when the KKK shows up, literally cutting from that to Charlottesville. The Harry Belefonte scene makes it pretty clear where the film’s sympathies lie: it’s not with the cops, who laugh after everything ends like they won but then their department gets shut down. It’s underlining the fact that cops are an arm of white supremacy, not a defense against it.