Black Dynamite

Rated: R

Genre: Comedy

Release Date: 16 October 2009

Runtime: 84 mins

Director: Scott Sanders

Cast: Michael Jai White, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Byron Minns

It takes skill to make a movie bad on purpose, but movies that are bad by accident can be a lot more fun. That paradox is the main lesson of Black Dynamite, a painstaking parody of some of the lesser examples of the blaxploitation genre that flourished in the early 1970s.

The acting is stiff, the dialogue painfully self-conscious, the action sequences choreographed and edited to look as cartoonish as possible. All of which is fun, for a while, in an academic kind of way. The title character — always referred to by his full name — is a solemn ghetto avenger played by Mr. White. He mixes it up with cops, pimps, hustlers and revolutionaries, all on his way to uncovering the evil machinations of (who else?) The Man.

The thing is, The Man is not the man he used to be, and the filmmakers’ tweaking of old-style militancy and old-fashioned racial oppression never amounts to much beyond a sendup of pop-cultural attitudes that were often self-mocking to begin with.

“Black Dynamite” was made with evident affection and a modicum of visual wit — Mr. Sanders’s nose for aged cinematic cheese is impressive — but the movie wears itself out long before The Man gets his comeuppance. As a five-minute clip on YouTube, this spoof might be a small masterpiece. As a feature film, it’s both too much and not nearly enough. (Source: NYTimes)