Definitely need to watch it again to figure out just how petty my complaints are. I'm definitely not in the GD camp that's displeased with Kaluuya, he put his foot in this thing IMO. Sometimes I felt like O'Neil was just a little too nervy and obvious, or the script just isn't totally selling the scene or something. In the moment I'm thinking of when he says he last words to Hampton in the film, it just seems kind of...weird? I dunno, he just seems very worthy of suspicion a few times during this movie (another moment: when he's talking to George Sams) in a way that kinda slips into breezy biopic cliché sometimes. The sort of thing where a movie doesn't feel the need to convince you something happened because you already know it happened.


A true nitpick: Kaluuya and Stanfield look substantially older than everyone else to the point I was shocked when I looked them up afterward and remembered they're 31 and 29 respectively. I don't think it ever really comes across just how little removed from childhood these people were and misses a chance to hit a huge emotional beat on that level. I don't wish the performances were different though, so it's a hair and makeup thing maybe? Sheen's J. Edgar Hoover almost looks like a Scooby Doo villain in the wrong light.

All that to say, I get why some critics are going the 4/5 route with this. There's a lot to love here and a lot to be impressed by, but I didn't necessarily close the HBO Max app on my PS4 and think I'd just watched a movie of the year contender, either.

Maybe I'll try to catch a matinée on Monday and cross my fingers nobody else has the same idea. There's a chance I just walked away from that first trailer hyping myself up for the best movie of our time, for our time I need the big screen to shake me free from.


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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
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