DVD Reviews

Black Dynamite

The history of film is rife with films that were labours of love which took a considerable amount of time to come to fruition. One of the most famous being John Huston’s adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling short story The Man Who Would Be King (1975). An ardent fan of Kipling since childhood, Huston spent over twenty years trying to make the film a reality. The final result was a superbly made and grandly entertaining adventure in the tradition of such Hollywood classics as Gunga Din (1939), which itself was based on a Kipling poem.

Unfortunately, not all labour of love films are gems, and star/co-writer Michael Jai White and director/co-writer Mark Sanders’ spoof of and tribute to 1970s Blaxploitation movies, Black Dynamite, is one such misfire.

White (who’s also a professional martial artist best known for the ill-fated 1997 movie adaptation of the celebrated Todd McFarlane comic book series Spawn) is a big fan of Blaxploitation movies, and conceived of an idea for one that he would star in. White convinced Sanders (a director friend whom he had worked with ten years previously) and Byron Minns (another friend that is also an actor and professional martial artist) to flesh out his concept into a feature-length screenplay. 

Black Dynamite tells the story of an ultra cool and swinging early seventies African-American former C.I.A. agent, of the same name, who sets out to bring down “The Man” after his brother is murdered, and proliferating African-American orphanages with heroin and African-American neighbourhoods with tainted malt liquor. 

This is the standard plot of most Blaxploitation movies, a B-grade genre that began with serious intentions and, to some degree, helped Hollywood to stay afloat and finance the high art they were making at the time, before it slipped into self-parody and eventually faded away, due to the birth of the Hollywood blockbuster in the mid seventies. Today, Blaxploitation is solely a time capsule guilty pleasure.

Black Dynamite parodies and pays tribute to such Blaxploitation classics as the Shaft trilogy (1971-’73), Superfly (1972), The Mack (1973) and Dolemite (1975). Every aspect of the production, from the wooden and over-the-top acting, cartoonish action sequences, sexiness, flashy camera work, choppy editing, technical flubs, continuity errors, 1970s wardrobe and décor, and funky r&b musical score, are spot on. Director Sanders chose to shoot on 16mm colour reversal stock to achieve an authentic grainy seventies look.

While Black Dynamite is a dead ringer for the movies it’s spoofing, it ultimately isn’t very funny. The first ten minutes are uproariously hilarious, but the remaining seventy-four, with the exception of a few moments, especially two clever animated sequences that include the closing credits, are thin and fall flat. Overall, the movie just feels like a comedy sketch stretched to feature-length, and it probably would’ve worked much better in that format at a compact five to ten minute running time.

The other problem with Black Dynamite is that it suffers from personality disorder. It doesn’t know if it wants to be a parody, tribute or exact replica. Movies set themselves up for failure when they try to do too much, as this one does. Homage should have been eschewed and the focus placed on spoof, with a touch of replication. That was the approach taken by Keenan Ivory Wayans in his debut feature I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (1988), a highly funny and vastly superior parody of Blaxploitation. Coincidentally, one of the supporting cast members of Black Dynamite is Tommy Davidson, who was part of the ensemble of Wayans’ classic sketch comedy television series In Living Color.

The friendship, camaraderie, and mutual love and affection for Black Dynamite Michael Jai White, Mark Sanders and Byron Minns share is evident on their entertaining commentary track for the DVD, and the Comic-Con press conference they gave to promote the movie and included as a bonus feature on the disc. However, that energy didn’t carry over into the final product. Basically, White, Sanders and Minns had fun making Black Dynamite, but it wasn’t fun watching it.   

Review By Thomas Marchese