Film Review – Outlaw Johnny Black

One of the great moviegoing surprises of 2009 was the release of “Black Dynamite.” Directed by Scott Sanders, the picture successfully pants the blaxploitation subgenre, doing so with a great imagination for satire and silliness. There were big laughs in “Black Dynamite,” along with an impressively committed lead performance from co-writer Michael Jai White, who did his best to bring a “Shaft”-y screen hero to life, wisely staying steely while delightful nonsense was set up around him. The feature also had the advantage of being 86 minutes long. White (without Sanders) doesn’t go for a straight sequel with “Outlaw Johnny Black,” but he looks to work with a similar level of wackiness for this parody of spaghetti westerns, unafraid to play in the same sandbox as Mel Brooks’s “Blazing Saddles.” Those expecting a return to the inspired goofballery of before are likely to be greatly disappointed in “Outlaw Johnny Black,” which isn’t as well-written or energized as “Black Dynamite,” caught up in a strange desire to be earnest instead of farcical. It also has the disadvantage of being 136 minutes long, which is an insane run time for a project like this, making the whole film feel leaden, despite the cast working hard to sell mediocre foolishness. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com