Political murders and its geopolitical chess board

With reports this week of a second assassination attempt on former US president, now presidential hopeful, Donald Trump, it seems as good a time as any to dig into the archives of cinematic explorations of political assassination. Throughout history and in particular during the end-of-days, paranoia-fuelled, high-anxiety peak of the Cold War, political assassinations have been part and parcel of the geopolitical chess board and movie history.

Here are three films that examine the phenomenon in very different ways, to different ends and make solid thrilling and sometimes provocative entertainment out of terrible real-world political murders that served to forever alter the course of history and leave many wondering for decades, “what if?” 

The Arthouse Essential:

Lumumba — YouTube

Raoul Peck’s 2001 feature film about the death and significant life of Congolese revolutionary leader Patrice Lumumba begins with the gory image of his body been dug up by Belgian soldiers before they chop it up and chuck it into oil drums for burning. Made before many recent revelations about US-led interference into the affairs of early post-independence Democratic Republic of Congo, the film helped to back up what had previously been written off as wild anti-American, pro-Soviet conspiracy. It moves from this macabre beginning back in time to examine the life and political ascendence of its hero, played with magnetic righteousness by French-Cameroonian actor Eric Eboue.

Through the telling of Lumumba’s life story and by asking questions about his murder, Peck’s film sharply brings into focus the bigger and even more despairing story of the DRC itself and the ways in which its rich reserves of natural resources led to greedy international forces inserting themselves into its postcolonial, independence history. The consequences of the death of Lumumba in 1961 were the instalment of US puppet Mobutu Sese Seko who ravaged the nation for his personal gain for three decades and ensured that the exploitive conditions for the continued pillaging of the country by foreign powers at the expense of its citizens continued long after his death.

Peck had already made a documentary about Lumumba in 1991 but his dramatisation of the subject — thanks to a keen eye for the bigger questions and a standout performance from Eboue — makes this a compelling film that mixes historical biography with political indignation to full and memorable effect.

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The Stone-cold Classic:

Judas and the Black Messiah — Rent or buy from Apple TV +

Daniel Kaluuya won a deserved Oscar for his portrayal of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in Shaka King’s searingly angry and heartbreaking film about Hampton’s rise to power within the Panther movement and his death at the hands of FBI agents at the age of only 21 in what many have rightfully come to believe was a stone-cold assassination. 

Hampton whose oratorial skills were legendary in his own short lifetime is the Messiah of his small but dedicated and threatening 60s-white-status-quo community. His Judas is Bill O’Neill (LaKeith Stanfield) a con man and small-time Chicago crook recruited by the FBI as an informant in its dirty tricks campaigns against J Edgar Hoover’s detested black power organisations.

Though Hampton is the focus of the film and Kaluuya gives an electrifying on-screen version of him, the focus of the film is on the morally ambiguous, tortured and ultimately more interesting character of O’Neill whose motivations remain murky by its end, which like the history it represents, offers no easy answers or chance for much redemption.

King’s most successful intervention is to make a clear connection between the consequences of the political violence employed by the paranoid Cold War US government on the future of race relations in America now. The “what if?” of Hampton’s death here is a big question and King makes a compelling case, if not for his subject’s messianic status, then for the idea that things would have been very different for his immediate community if he had still been around.

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The Diamond in the Rough:

Executive Action — YouTube

Long before Oliver Stone’s JFK became the last Hollywood word on the many questions that many Americans had about the 1963 assassination of president John F Kennedy, this 1973 conspiracy thriller, written by legendary blacklisted liberal scribe Dalton Trumbo, asked many of the same questions, even if it didn’t manage to pull the threads together as stylishly as Stone would in 1991.

Seen as tasteless for mainstream when it was released to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the assassination, the film has nonetheless managed to become something of a cult favourite among paranoid political thriller fans and deranged conspiracy theorist nutters alike. 

Stodgily directed by David Miller but ably acted by a strong cast that includes veterans Robert Ryan, Burt Lancaster and Will Geer it’s essentially an on-screen collation of many theories put forward in the wild waters of the Kennedy Assassination conspiracy genre. Fifty years later and even after Stone’s classic film, the version of events presented here remains as plausible for those who don’t believe the version of the Warren Report as it may be impossible to accept for those who do.

What’s not in dispute is that Kennedy’s assassination remains a key moment in the history of the US that allowed for the circumstances to be created for fundamental changes that went against the principles that the 35th president and those who believed in him publicly espoused.

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