Just fantastic. Shaka King takes a crucial moment in history that could feel so cloying and unfocused in the hands of a less careful director, and gives us a smart, uncompromising tragedy about fear and power that properly portrays Bill O’Neal’s story as both a slave rebellion and an act of war. Lakeith Stanfield and Daniel Kaluuya are exactly as great as you think they’re gonna be, if not better, but Shaka King’s name better reverberate through the halls of every studio after this.

Fred Hampton was 21 years old when he was murdered by the FBI. Twenty-one years old.

if your ensemble has lakeith stanfield in it, it’s gonna be a good film. devastating from beginning to end.

in my opinion we do not have a more entrancing, magnetic, fizzling, romantic, riveting, endlessly watchable actor in our ("our") generation than Daniel Kaluuya

i agree jesse plemons, we should give lakeith stanfield an academy award!!!

The single biggest weakness this film has is that it’s stars are much older than the people they were portraying. The effect this has is to diminish what’s most appalling about the stories of O’Neill and Hampton — that they were little more than children, manipulated and murdered by their government. 

I have no complaints with the performances themselves — although I think O’Neill is underwritten — and I think the film as a whole is very strong. But the age thing is a serious problem.

Fuck, man. What else is there to say?

this one movie taught me more about the black panthers than school ever did and probably ever will.

Career topping performances for both Kaluuya and Stanfield which is impressive considering how amazing their careers already are.

SUNDANCE 2021: film #25

“takes a thief to catch a thief”

SO well made. the performances here are on another level and all merit mentioning but i think my favorite was dominique fishback who brings both vulnerability and strength to the role. my money is on daniel for the oscar

Kaluuya's tremendous performance here pretty much makes up for O'Neal being somewhat underwritten. I get making him a character of ambivalence but Stanfield seems to be emotionally pitched at a guy whose psyche gradually begins engaging in open revolt but whose historical and narrative actions don't line up with that. This is brutally timely, though, in a way that doesn't feel like it's the project's sole priority. I just wish it had been grittier, more confrontational, but in any case it's altogether striking and energetic.

I don’t think there will ever be a time where Daniel Kaluuya doesn’t blow me away