Black Dynamite (2009)

(This is my review of the LAMB April Movie of the Month.)

USA, 84 minutes
Director: Scott Sanders
Writers: Michael Jai White, Byron Minns, Scott Sanders
Photography: Shawn Maurer
Music: Adrian Younge
Editor: Adrian Younge
Cast: Michael Jai White, Obba Babatunde, Kevin Chapman, Tommy Davidson, Richard Edson, Arsenio Hall, Byron Minns, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Nicole Sullivan, James McManus

Black Dynamite is an amiable send-up of '70s-era blaxploitation fare that generally hits most of the right notes, and provides a few laughs along the way. I never have been a huge fan of B-movies of this era or very many others, so caveats, but it looks and moves like ones I know, for example with the grainy umber palette suffused all through, reproducing digitally the slightly washed-out, slightly muddy feel to a certain kind of film stock. It features a corny horn-based funk band on the score accompanying the action—at times it seems like that music, which I recall hearing at least as often on TV of the time, punctuates every last plot development no matter how small. Characters are prone to erupt with "baaad" exclamations such as, "Sister Betty made some hog maws and, man, she put her ankle in it." Some of the best laughs, for me, came at the expense of the clumsy writing from those movies of yore, as when an early flashback scene embeds exposition in the dialogue: "Jimmy, I am 18-year-old Black Dynamite and you're my 16-year-old kid brother." Or, in another scene, when characters start reading stage directions along with their lines, e.g., "The militants turn, startled." (Did that really happen in some of those movies?) A lot of clever and amusing animation accompanies the action, such as a panorama of zodiac symbols that serves as montage during a sex scene. The plot revolves around a nefarious government plot (personally overseen by Dick Nixon) involving malt liquor, the mysterious death of Black Dynamite's kid brother, orphans on smack, and various other matters. Michael Jai White plays Black Dynamite; I've only seen him previously in 1997's Spawn, a movie I don't recall well. He's fine as the big swaggering dick and Vietnam veteran out to avenge his brother's death and otherwise get to the bottom of things. He's also a terrific fighter, particularly when he lets fly with kicks, and he has a tidy way of setting his face into a mask of self-seriousness that serves many purposes—evincing his imposing macho presence, resetting after laugh lines, and generally making clear to all around him that he is someone to be taken seriously when they are all clowns. Wait a minute, isn't he the biggest clown here? And speaking of, one of my favorite sight gags comes in a formal meeting of pimps, when one Captain Kangaroo Pimp is asked for his input—and there he is, an almost perfect Robert Keeshan lookalike in a red jacket, a kindly looking white fellow with gray mustache, bad haircut, and all. It doesn't make a lick of sense. Oh, but did you think it would? This must be one to get your ankle into.