Blood and Bone

 Back around the late 2000s, while mainstream action was having a bit of a... fallow period, shall we say, the Direct-to-Video/Video-on-Demand (VoD from here on out) and the international markets provided a good alternative. It's a similar situation to the resurgence of gore and cruelty in horror a little earlier, and the same root cause is arguably behind John Wick and the dominance of the 87eleven action design style a few years - pendular motion.
 In 2009, the same year the Neveldine/Taylor menace gave us both a Crank sequel and Gamer, John Hyams provided some counterprogramming with his first excellent sequel to Universal Soldier and genre/budget-level stalwart Isaac Florentine did his first Ninja movie with Scott Adkins; Elsewhere in the world Gareth Evans teamed up with Iko Uwais for the first time, Tony Jaa used a freaking elephant as a prop for an incredible climactic fight, and  Johnnie To released his cool as ice Vengeance. (Future VoD king Jessee V. Johnson was still working on lower quality English potboilers).

 But the MVP that year was unquestionably Michael Jai White, who starred in two very different stone-cold  classics: Black Dynamite, an absurdist love letter to all things blaxploitation, and the film we're discussing tonight: Blood and Bone, a throwback to all those '80s and '90s underground fighting tournament movies.

 The first image - of White silhouetted against the sun, purposefully walking towards the camera with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder - is clean and striking enough that at first I thought it was a production logo. That cuts to a kick-ass cold open where White's character, Bone, gets accosted in a prison bathroom by a gang of shank wielding thugs. It... doesn't go well for them, and the final kick of the fight imprints the film's title on the screen. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you usher in an action movie.

 The story itself starts when Bone hires a room at the house of a nice family (led by Nona Gaye). First thing he does is to hit up the local neighbourhood illegal fight ring and convince the local organizer Pinball (Dante Brasco, in an annoying role he and the script manage to make somewhat endearing) to give him a chance and throw some fights his way. Bone seems to be targeting local hoodlum James (Eamonn Walker) and his prize fighter, the 'roided out Hammer Man (Bob Sapp).

 There is a reason for that, of course, one that gets revealed as Bone makes his way up the tournament ladder and impresses James enough to be drawn into his inner circle; The plot will involve a woman (Michelle Belegrin), a rich racist Brit (Julian Sands), and a buttload of MMA and martial artists (Sapp, Gina Carano, Kimbo Slice, Matt Mullins and Ernest Miller).

 It's a solid plot that uses one of my least favorite type of protagonist: the mysterious, infallible, morally unassailable badass who's both indestructible and always four moves ahead of all his opponents*; I'd say it's a Clint Eastwood-style character, but in bringing him down to earth it ends up closer to Steven Seagal. It's a testament to Michael Jai White's outsized charisma that he manages to imbue this  fantasy wish-fulfillment character with a semblance of an inner life. Beyond that, he deploys all his usual likeability, and he looks like a Greek statue come to life. Of course he makes it work.

 But James, the villain, makes just as big an impression: a suave, deeply callous asshole who gets two startling scenes that show how evil he is (one of them set to Wang Chung), but feels he's above the street-level shit and considers himself to be some sort of Samurai. I love how this sets up a [slight spoilers] late-film swordfight, one where Bone chooses to dishonour him by using only the sheath of the Chinese sword he's proffered. Even if I wasn't completely on-board by then, I'd be delighted.

 The fights maybe cut a little more frequently than I'd prefer, but everything is always established and shown clearly, with many varied styles shown off. I shouldn't have to say this, but White's fighting is on-point. There's a little bit of shoddy CGI blood, but what are you going to do.

 Michael Andrews's script adorns the admittedly basic story with a lot of fun little moments, good characters, snippets of wry humour, and solid badass lines. And the direction, by Ben Ramsey, is bloody excellent; Along with cinematographer Roy H. Wagner's constantly roving cameras, they get a very slick, good-looking and propulsive film - I think that out of the action VoD crowd only John Hyams makes better-looking movies.
 It's a shame that an apparently disastrous Dragonball movie derailed Ramsey's career to the point where he hasn't been able to get another film off the ground yet. Much as it was championed by Outlaw Vern and others, this movie also remains sadly underseen when compared to the other two MJW VoD action classics. We never got the brother-avenging sequel that was set up here. That iconic shot of Bone walking out of the sun would never grace another film.

 If this sounds like it might even be marginally enjoyable to you, then it's extremely recommended.

*: This, of course, is established while he's playing chess with a friend.

Outlaw Johnny Black

 The long-in-development Outlaw Johnny Black has been touted a spiritual sequel to the excellent 2009 Blaxploitation spoof Black Dynamite, but a direct comparison won't be kind to the former. Where Dynamite was pacey, irreverent and overstuffed with wild ideas, Outlaw is a little ponderous, earnest and mostly wholesome.

 Still funny and entertaining, mind, and it comes by its earnestness honestly. Michael Jai White stars, directs, and co-writes with Byron Keith Minns, who also has a significant role; Their passion for the material is clear, and it's one of those movies you can tell people had a great time making. But it's about as different a spoof as you could imagine. It shows so much reverence and love for the genre that I think it works better as a light-hearted Western movie than as a send-up of one. It does every now and then deploy the sort of non-sequiturs, sharp observations and over-the top humour its predecessor traded in freely, but here they feel a little out of place.

 Johnny Black (Jai White) is one of those cool, badass, slightly amoral antiheroes who roams the plains in the late nineteenth century hunting for vengeance - he's after the racist asshole who killed his father, one Brett Clayton (Chris Browning, effectively menacing).

 He's got a literal bullet with his target's name on it, and as he rides into a town he signals to the town undertaker that his professional services will be needed before long. An easy, but excellent genre-savvy introduction. Black's there because he knows that the local bank will be hit by Clayton's gang. However, he intervenes to save a couple of Indians from a gang of hoodlums, and is soon forced to run away from the law.

 On the run and without a horse (the poor animal literally kicks the bucket), the outlaw's rescued by a pastor (Keith Minns) who's on his way to take over ministerial duties on the small mining town of Hope Springs and to meet up with a sweetheart he's been corresponding with for years. Things don't work out, and with the pastor left for dead after an Indian attack, Black pulls a Sommersby and takes over his identity.

 The plan is to fake it at Hope Springs until he can abscond with the church's money, but of course the complications start piling on quickly.

 The first complication is Bessie, the pastor's sweetheart, played by Erica Ash - followed by her sister, Jessie (Anika Noni Rose), whom Black falls for almost immediately. But he's also expected to tend to the towns spiritual needs, something to which his temperament is humorously unsuited for. The other main complication is that the original pastor wasn't as dead as Black thought - after an uncomfortable, cringe-inducing farce with his Indian attackers (all the Indians in the movie are pointedly played by very conspicuous non-native Americans), the priest manages to make it to Hope Springs, where Black manages to coerce him to go along with his plan.

 There's also the matter of local land baron Tom Sheally (Barry Bostwick), who knows there's oil near the pastor's house and is threatening to invoke WWRBBM (White Woman Raped By Black Man - an acronym which, hilariously, everyone in the movie knows well) to get a posse to come burn the town down unless he gets the deed to the land.

 It's a slow-moving, classical plotline that hinges on a very predictable spiritual awakening for the titular outlaw (who, to be fair, was never particularly evil to begin with). But it's carefully crafted and engaging enough that its earnestness actually becomes a strength; The scene where Black has a very public epiphany, spurred by memories of his father giving a sermon on forgiveness, is particularly effective and graceful.

 Elsewhere, the movie slows to a standstill - there is absolutely no reason this film needed to be a hundred and thirty minutes long. It doesn't help that the tone is all over the place, with Airplane! style gags thrown in along with more character based- and extremely broad humour and shameless mugging to the camera. Some of said mugging is pretty funny, like when poor, heartbroken Bessie aggressively cries at Black. But there are some real stinkers mixed in, too.

 The cast do a lot to elevate the material. Michael Jai White is one seriously charismatic dude, of course, and he has crack comedic timing. Byron Keith Minns is also very funny, and the ensemble cast that the film has assembled is mostly excellent - whether it's a one-joke character like Bessie or Jessie's slow-witted brother (Eme Ikwuakor), or a more sympathetic, layered character like an ally played by Kevin Chapman. 

 Action-wise it does pretty well. There isn't a huge amount of it, but it does run the gamut: gunfights, a gratuitous bar brawl, horse falls, horse-dragging, and all the stunts you'd expect out of a true-blooded Western; You can tell the crew was itching to do a lot of these. There's also a little bit of martial arts, with a couple of very quick but cool demonstrations of Jai White's skills, and a very funny Jackie Chan-style slap/quickdraw fight.

 White's direction is unshowy and competent; Despite some nice scenery early on and some stylistic references like dramatic zooms, it's not a particularly visually appealing movie - and that, just like not letting the martial arts run amuck, seems like a considered decision. By design, it works best as a slightly corny, meat-and-potatoes Western movie that just happens to have quite a few jokes thrown in.