Michael Jai White, scripter/star of BLACK DYNAMITE, will be referred to as "King" Michael Jai White on this blog from this day forward. As in King of the Wakandas. King of the Jungle. King Black Bolt. Elvis the King. He's not who would be King, he is the King.
BLACK DYNAMITE isn't a send-up of Blaxploitation movies such as SHAFT and TRUCK TURNER. It's more like a flipbook of the B-movies of the 1970s, one of those little books where the flipped pages show the same character, drawn over and over, seemingly moving as if by magic.
White, and his co-writers and crew, know they have a hell of a flipbook. They keep showing it to you throughout this movie, over and over. It's fun the first time, it's fun every time. Until the end of the movie, you don't get a sense of watching a movie. It's more like seeing the dreams of Fred Williamson, Richard Roundtree, Jim Brown and Isacc Hayes. We're plugged right into their experience as stars of B-movies in the 1970s. Dreams of the cool, the ludicrous, and the miserable conditions they worked under.
I was so happy during BLACK DYNAMITE, with a grin so big the top of my head might fall off. Not everything works well in BLACK DYNAMITE, but the stuff that does is unsurpassed by any contemporary treatment of Blaxploitation. BLACK DYNAMITE glories in the shoestring budget, the poor audio/visual, the stilted dialogue and the random lost extras whose delivery and expressions reveal amateur realism you just can't teach. The wonder of the B-movie is in its struggle to survive, onscreen, right in front of you. In that, the B-movie and your average Joe Schmuck are in much the same boat: lacking talent, money, and good looks. And yet sometimes brilliant, sometimes beauiful, sometimes sexy as hell. That's the average.
BLACK DYNAMITE has a couple of off-setting cameos from more established performers, and some welcome lost stars as well. The cameos, particularly the "big reveal" villain's wife in the Honky House, grates a bit, steals some of that authentic delight. But King Michael Jai White stays so iconic and regal in his role as Black Dynamite that you just can't care.
Sign me up to become the first Afronaut to orbit King Michael's hair and moustache. I just can't imagine anyone having a better time than with BLACK DYNAMITE.
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