Life is making it such that longform reviews are almost impossible these days (or at least we’re getting painfully behind), but in the interest of saying something before it arrives in theaters this weekend (October 23 in limited release), director Scott Sanders’ “Black Dynamite,” is a cheeky and mostly clever satire, send-up and celebration of blaxploitation cinema and all that it entails, but even as a 90 minute movie, the repetitive joke of the picture wears thin pretty fast and the one-note gag might have worked better as a 30-minute short.
Blaxploitation enthusiasts and advance ironists will probably revel in the the self aware lampooning and it’s enjoyable in it’s first act, but then becomes a rather tedious exercise and you’re basically waiting for the predictable conclusion (the “man” murders Black Dynamite’s brother, pumps heroin into local orphanages, and floods the ghetto with contaminated malt liquor, so Black Dynamite swears off retirement to save the day).
Michael Jai White does a serviceable job (he’s also an excellent fighter) with the purposefully clunky and expository dialogue and fortunately (and wisely), no one plays the picture for winky laughs and the material is played straight. Arsenio Hall makes a pretty funny and almost indistinguishable cameo appearance, so you’ll have to look out for him.
We’ll say this: the aesthetics of the picture are top notch, the music is killer and shooting the picture on 16mm was a smart choice as there’s an authentic, lo-fi look with excellent textures and grains; it looks like a blaxploitation movie from the ’70s, and it feels like one too. But nailing the culture and design does not necessarily make for a mindblowing cinema experience or even a fully satisfying or enjoyable one.
Less discerning audiences simply looking for fun and entertainment value should be more than satisfied (i.e., the target demo will love it, geeks will have no quibbles), but we found ourselves saying, “yeah, we get it” and clockwatched throughout most of the second half.
“Black Dynamite” is not a bad picture at all. There are some humorous riffs and particularly every cinematic stereotypes of blaxploitation constructs — boom mics in the shot, poor lighting with shadows on the cheap walls, action blows that hilariously miss their marks and strange cuts — are pretty hilarious in the picture, but we barely see them. Perhaps choosing to not overindulge in these mistakes that marked the genre and now have become their amusing they’re-so-bad-it’s-good delights, is a wise choice, but they certainly provided the most laughs so we could have used a few more. We will say the look is consistent and largely more successful than the “Grindhouse,” films, especially Tarantino’s “Death Proof,” that abandoned the aesthetic midway for no particular reason.
“Black Dynamite,” has limited aims and probably succeeds with its low-stakes ambitions — we weren’t expecting masterpiece theater, but it just wasn’t as comedic or entertaining as we’d hoped. Which in this case, really shouldn’t be too much to ask. [C+]