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| An expertly 1970s-styled poster for Scott Sanders's Black Dynamite |
Black Dynamite is out to clean up his neighborhood and punish the ones who are responsible for the killing of his brother. Clues lead him all the way to the highest office in society!
Black Dynamite is a funny blaxpoitation spoof action comedy, which presents a probable plot from one of the 1970s films it pokes fun at (such as Super Fly (1972) and Black Caesar (1973)) slightly eschewed, amping up the effects, character types and technical defects in the filmmaking. It is done with enthusiasm, and especially the dialog is often hilarious. Michael Jai White (Chocolate City (2015)) is a perfect, and very handsome, fit as the title hero.
The story is thrown together in a slipshod manner, and from around the middle of the movie going forward, it really doesn't have much left in its bag for us, regrettably.
Black Dynamite is written by star-co-writer White, Byron Minns (Death Merchants (1991), actor) and co-writer-director Scott Sanders (Aztec Warrior (2016)).
Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 2.9 mil. $
Box office: 296k $
= Mega-flop
[Black Dynamite premiered 18 January (Sundance) and runs 84 minutes. The film is based on an idea White got in 2006 while watching blaxploitation films. The film was shot on 16 mm Kodak stock, later converted digitally for editing, in 20 days in June 2008. Sony bought the distribution rights for, reportedly, nearly 2 mil. $ - a poor bargain for them. The film opened #35 in 70 theaters to a 131k $ first weekend in North America, closing after its second week there with a 242k $ gross (81.8 % of the total gross). It was released in only 3 other markets. The 2nd and 3rd biggest were France with 33k $ (11.1 %) and United Arab Emirates with 17k $ (5.7 %). Despite counting as a mega-flop theatrically, the movie likely made money on TV rights, DVD sales and through VoD. Roger Ebert awarded the film 3/4 stars, equal to a notch better than this review. A spin-off animated series with a same title was created for Adult Swim, which ran in 2 seasons from 2011-15. Black Dynamite is certified fresh at 84 % with a 7.2 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
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