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Jamie Foxx, left, and Gerard Butler in Law Abiding Citizen. (OVERTURE FILMS)

Black Dynamite

"First Lady, I'm sorry I pimp slapped you into that china cabinet."

The once proud movie parody (Airplane!, Top Secret) is now the most debased of all film genres thanks to that horrible cycle of films from the inept, beneath-contempt team of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer (Date Movie, Epic Movie, etc.)

Attempting to restore comic dignity to the form, director Scott Sanders lovingly recreates the blaxploitation film -- including baffling editing, visible microphones, make-it-up-as-you-go plotting, gratuitous nudity and even more gratuitous martial arts.

On that last score, the movie stars real martial arts star Michael Jai White (Spawn) doing an excellent impersonation of '70s martial arts star Jim Kelly in the title role (why yes, his name is Black Dynamite). Mr. Dynamite is an orphan-turned-CIA agent-turned-ghetto avenger, investigating a shipment of drugs apparently meant to be consumed by neighbourhood orphans. ("Not the orphans!") and a toxic brew of malt liquor.

Blaxploitation films are frequently the targets of parody (I'm Gonna Git You Sucka!, Undercover Brother), but this one may be the most deadly accurate, even if it does veer towards the downright ludicrous by the conclusion.

Pity it didn't get a better theatrical release. Any two minutes of its running time is funnier than the entire collected works of Friedberg-Seltzer.

I blame The Man. 3-1/2 stars

Amreeka

NOT a lot of films could boast dividing their shooting locations between Israel's West Bank and Winnipeg.

Just don't expect much mention of Winnipeg (doubling for small-town Illinois) in this directorial debut from writer-director Cherien Dabis, who elegantly syncs those worlds-apart landscapes.

Muna (Nisreen Faour) is a single mother living an unsatisfactory existence in her occupied homeland. Between dodging the sight of her ex-husband and enduring the indignities of negotiating her way through Israeli checkpoints on her way to and from work, life is tough.

It seems a golden opportunity when Muna and her son Fadi (Melkar Muallem) unexpectedly receive confirmations of long-forgotten green card applications allowing them to move to the United States.

They arrive in the U.S. to live with Muna's sister Raghda (Hiam Abbass of The Visitor), her doctor husband and their Americanized children.

Unfortunately, the move comes as America is invading Iraq (a sign outside a restaurant bears the prescient prank message "Support Our Oops") and anti-Arab sentiment is high. Raghda's husband is losing his patients, and the family is receiving death threats. (The Jordan-born Dabis herself grew up during the first Gulf War and her family experienced similar hardships.)

It's a setup for melodrama, but the movie has lots of humour, mostly due to the sweet screen presence of Faour.

On the DVD extras is a whole episode of a British movie series titled The Fabulous Picture Show in which Dabis is shown doing a Q&A on the film at an Arab film festival, discussing how her own adolescent experience during the first Gulf War inspired this film. Elsewhere, there's straight B-roll interviews with the cast and crew in which production designer discusses how the construction of a bogus White Castle restaurant in Winnipeg actually succeeded in attracting would-be customers.  4 stars

Law Abiding Citizen

GERARD Butler is Clyde Shelton, an inventor whose life is destroyed when a couple of psychotic criminals break into his house, rape and murder his wife, kill his little daughter and leave Clyde alive and broken.

The two thugs are apprehended. But Philadelphia prosecutor Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) is an attorney who is a little too concerned with his percentage of successful prosecutions. Rice cuts a deal with the more vile of the two criminals, so that he gets a token sentence while his partner gets the death penalty.

Clyde is outraged. And Clyde's outrage is not to be taken lightly. Ten years later, when Rice attends the execution of one of the perps, the "humane" execution goes horribly wrong.

The second perp has an even more elaborate fate awaiting him. It involves drugs that will keep him conscious no matter what, and the employment of a circular saw the manufacturers would deem inadvisable.

That would be the complete plot of most revenge movies, but it's just the opening act of this film. Clyde is arrested and imprisoned for the murder. But once behind bars, the deaths continue, and this time, the victims are culled from the justice establishment that failed to satisfy Clyde with their plea-bargaining ways. Even while occupying a dank solitary confinement cell in what appears to be a Revolutionary-era prison, Clyde can make bad things happen.

The same can be said of director F. Gary Gray. Working from a script by Kurt Wimmer, Gray is at a disadvantage in that vigilantes are traditionally heroes in most Hollywood films, and he's been saddled with a guy who seethes and pontificates like a right-wing blogger pushed over the edge. 1 star

Top DVD rentals

1. Couples Retreat

2. The Time Traveler's Wife

3. Zombieland

4. The Stepfather

5. Surrogates

6. The Hurt Locker

7. Love Happens

8. Ong Bak 2: The Beginning

9. Ninja

10. A Serious Man

-- Rogers Video, week ending Feb. 14

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 18, 2010 E4