Blu-ray Review: Black Dynamite

"Hey, Little Mama. It may be bigger than you, and it may be bigger than me, but it ain't bigger than you and me, can you dig it?" — Black Dynamite

Movie

Black Dynamite (Michael Jai White) is one bad dude. An ex-CIA agent who now spends his time loving on the ladies and practicing his kung fu, his world is shaken when his little brother Jimmy is gunned down by some shady pimps. And what's worse, those pimps are working with the government, and they're all involved in selling drugs to kids. Kids at the orphanage! Let's just say that they all picked the wrong day to cross Black Dynamite. But really, is there ever a good day for that? Dynamite has to pull some favors with his friends in the underground (solid!), but pretty soon he's busting asses from uptown to downtown, from the crack house to the White House.

In short, Black Dynamite is both a spot-on parody of and tribute to the blaxploitation genre of movies from the '70s. It's mostly delivered straight and serious, but with enough sly winks and subtle jabs at the goofs and stock conventions of those movies (and let's be honest, of most action movies still) that it becomes a simply hilarious bit of filmmaking. What really makes the film is the impeccable attention to detail. The costumes are amazingly spot-on; and the original songs in the film blend in so well with the period music that you can't tell the two apart until you notice how the lyrics are giving some additional on-screen exposition to the plot. Much greater than the tired slapstick genre of film parodies that litter theatres, Black Dynamite shows how well the idea can be done with a little homework and a lot of passion for the project.

Video/Audio

I actually wonder if Blu-ray is overkill for this kind of film. A clean 1080p transfer is hard to complain about, but seeing that Black Dynamite aspires to emulate films that were both quickly and cheaply made, its presentation here is sometimes too good. The underexposed and grainy shots, the abundance of yellow color balancing, the excess of grain, the faded tonal palette... all there. But they actually had to go through some effort to get there. Fortunately, it looks so authentic, you half expect to walk outside into the '70s when you're done. But in spots you wish they had dragged the print behind a bus just a little more. When you cut from scenes with laughably awesome stock footage, complete with excessive dirt artifacts and debris, you kind of miss it when its gone. So to sum up, this may be the one instance where I actively wanted the print to look worse, but its still fine that it doesn't. Enjoy that hi-def, but you would probably enjoy it just as much in standard (or VHS).

Article Author: David R Perry

Lost somewhere in the rolling hills of Tennessee, David R Perry can occasionally be found doing dark, unspeakable things to words. Printed words, spoken words, electronically mangled words... really any kind but twittered words.

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