Black Dynamite

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaages ago, I saw a trailer for Black Dynamite. It looked like this:



Then, what feels like three years later, I saw it in cinemaphonic quadrovision, and it was indeed righteous.

Black Dynamite is a blaxploitation spoof in love with the genre it parodies and recreates it not just with tongue in cheek but with the utmost respect. And it's accurate too: in fact I'd say it's as realistic-looking as the ultimate blaxploitation movie, Live And Let Die.

Afros are so huge they're orbited by small moons, crash zooms and deliberate continuity errors abound and the sound effects whenever Black Dynamite punches anyone appear to have been achieved by dropping a Christmas Cracker factory on a firework factory. There's also an animated sex scene which rivals Team America's for inventive rudery.

Michael Jai White is astounding as the eponymous hero - even his mother and aunt call him 'Black Dynamite' - with pecs the size of tectonic plates (but really titchy nipples) and a moustache that threatens to out-fuzz Tom Selleck's. The fights are perfectly choreographed, shot and edited for maximum skull-cracking effect and the humour comes from exploiting the conventions of the genre rather than stoopid gags about flares and big lapels. The film's crowning glory is the surprise villain and his diabolical plot - I won't spoil it here but it's perfect for this movie and makes for a very satisfying finale.

The plot gets a bit muddled at times, with Black Dynamite's goal of finding his brother's killer frequently getting forgotten about for long stretches, and while it is chucklesome it never quite brings the LOLs. And if anyone can make any sense of the baffling scenes over the end credits, let me know. They look like they should be outtakes but feel more like deleted scenes from the DVD. Still, it's impossible not to love a film with the kind of poster that would cause Quentin Tarantino to have an accident in his nethers:

Black Dynamite is showing in about eight cinemas across the UK. This is bad. Not superbad, bad bad.

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