Black Dynamite

Not an imitation of 1970s blaxploitation but a reproduction of it. Michael Jai White and his collaborators tried to remake the films of the period exactly rather than send them up, and the comedy comes from that. Black Dynamite is a former soldier and secret agent who starts cleaning up the streets after his brother is killed. The trail takes him from drugs to the mob to a government conspiracy and finally to the White House. It was shot on Super 16 colour reversal stock, to catch the saturated colour, hard contrast and grain of the period, and finished in twenty days. Boom mics dropping into frame, actors fluffing lines and carrying on, and continuity errors were all deliberately left in. Michael Jai White stars and co-wrote, with Arsenio Hall and Tommy Davidson in the cast. Scott Sanders directed. It premiered at Sundance in 2009 and the distribution rights sold for close to two million dollars. A constant laugh for anyone who knows the genre. For anyone who has never seen the source films, half the jokes go past, and it also carries the sexism of the films it is copying.