This one gets a soft PURR. That's to be expected; the Bad Cat is, after all, a black cat. The strength of this work lies in the performances of the two principal actors and their portrayals of the two main characters. LaKeith Stanfield does a solid job as informant Bill O'Neal, deftly walking the line of his role's ambivalence, while Daniel Kaluuya presents a powerful image as lead Chicago Panther Fred Hampton. Don't be surprised to see Kaluuya get an Oscar nod come this time next year. The only weakness of this film lies in its story, such as it is; what writer-director Shaka King presents is more a record of loosely connected events rather than a fully fleshed-out storyline. That approach leads the viewer to sometimes wonder where things are headed, rather than paying full attention to what is happening in the present scene. Nevertheless, many of those scenes are riveting in and of themselves, delivering a strong focus on the personal that informs the political. And King shows them with enough visual panache to make much of the tableaux interesting all the way to the film's gut-punch conclusion. As always with "based on" movies, it's hard to know how much of what we see here is factual and how much is interpretation; however, much of what is presented in the film's coda backs up what the whole work shows. (And the Chicago setting certainly gives portrayal a lot of credibility.). All in all, an interesting critique of yesterday, and today, and definitely worth a look.
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