Black Dyna­mite

So pitch per­fect is Black Dynamite’s lov­ing pas­tiche of blax­ploita­tion that it’s bare­ly satire at all. Rather, it’s a hyper­ac­tive rein­car­na­tion of a lost genre in which ​’70s style sits com­fort­ably along­side naugh­ties irony. The result is the crowd-pleas­ing under­ground hit of the summer.

Michael Jai White plays ex-CIA badass, babe-mag­net and scourge of drug-push­ing scum-suck­ers every­where, Black Dyna­mite. Part-Shaft, part-Bruce Lee, all man, Dyna­mite is a heady amal­ga­ma­tion of the stereo­types, anti-heroes and car­i­ca­tures that marked the bitch-slap­ping, jive-talk­ing hey­day of blax­ploita­tion. He also has the coolest jin­gle ever.

Dyna­mite is called into action by his old CIA boss­es to help them bust a drug-deal­ing oper­a­tion that’s turn­ing the ghet­to kids into mind­less zom­bies. More to the point, it’s affect­ing the mac-dad­dies’ pimpin’ busi­ness, and it’s mak­ing the local honies upset. Only Dy-na-mite! can save the day.

Nat­u­ral­ly that plot is a ten­u­ous hook on which to hang a series of scenes that recre­ate key ele­ments of the genre – sex with hot chicks, sassy ban­ter with a fat mama, kick­ing ass against cor­rupt cops, and kung fu – lots of kung fu. Any­body who missed the orig­i­nal blax­ploita­tion boat might find that their near­est ref­er­ence points are Dirk Diggler’s hilar­i­ous­ly po-faced action pornos in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boo­gie Nights.

But Michael Jai White is the real deal – an authen­tic karate cham­pi­on who brings cred­i­bil­i­ty to the movie’s fight scenes despite nev­er remov­ing his tongue from his cheek.

The laughs are big and reg­u­lar, many of them from the visu­al gags that lam­poon the genre’s typ­i­cal­ly low-end pro­duc­tion val­ues. But what’s more impres­sive is just how right the film feels – from the pro­duc­tion design and sound­track to the mud­dy, messed-up grad­ing, Black Dyna­mite feels as though it’s been recov­ered from a time-cap­sule and sim­ply set free.

It’s a gen­uine breath of fresh air – a film that’s come from nowhere but one that’s des­tined for hero­ic status.