Saturday, August 15, 2009

Black Dynamite (Director: Scott Sanders): I don’t think the pro­gram­mers of the Toronto After Dark Film Festival could have picked a more per­fect film for their Opening Night gala. A nearly-sold-out Bloor Cinema was rocking with laughter from prac­tic­ally the first frame of Scott Sanders and star/writer Michael Jai White’s affec­tionate spoof of 70s blax­ploit­a­tion movies.

The first thing I have to say is that Michael Jai White was a rev­el­a­tion. At 41 years of age and a well-muscled 240 pounds, he seems almost incap­able of the flying mar­tial arts kicks he reg­u­larly delivers to the dope dealers and pimps who pop­u­late the story. But not only can he whoop ass. His comic timing is per­fect as well, which isn’t that sur­prising when you con­sider that he’s the writer of the film. Director Sanders revealed in the post-screening Q&A that he and White had been working on the idea behind the film for many years, and they put together a cheap trailer using clips from old films mixed with their own dia­logue. The trailer was enough to get the film funded, even though they spent a sig­ni­ficant amount of the budget on licensing old footage from 70s shows like Charlie’s Angels and The Rookies.

The cruddy 70s look is essen­tial to main­taining the “grind­house” feel of the many cheaply-made films Black Dynamite is mocking. Sanders even goes so far as to include “mis­takes” like boom mikes intruding into the frame (an homage to Dolemite, he says) and hil­arious con­tinuity errors like a character’s tears dis­ap­pearing and reappearing between scenes. The audi­ence lapped it up, even when the plot’s ludicrous twists and turns brought Black Dynamite face to face with President Nixon, who seemed pretty handy with a set of nunchuks.

A film like this could easily have been fun but for­get­table. Gunplay, mar­tial arts, and the spot-on kitschy art dir­ec­tion keep our eyes amused, but for me the real cre­ativity was on dis­play in the writing. The many mem­or­able one-liners and hil­arious song lyrics give this tre­mendous repeat viewing poten­tial. Within the first ten minutes, I was already eager to bring my friends to see Black Dynamite.

Here is the Q&A with dir­ector Scott Sanders from after the screening:

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Duration: 14:23

(8/10)

Tagged as: #afterdark09, blaxploitation

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