DIRECTOR: Michael Flatley
CAST: Michael Flatley, Eric Roberts, Patrick Bergin, Nicole Evans, Ian Beattie, Rachel Warren, Serhat Metin
RUNNING TIME: 90 mins
CERTIFICATE: 15
BASICALLY…: A retired secret agent (Flatley) is forced back into his dangerous life…
NOW FOR THE REVIEW…
Sometimes, the most fascinating bad movies are the ones that are entirely driven by one person’s misplaced passion for the project, because in some perverted way they offer glimpses into the souls of their singular creative forces, who have enough money and power to get them financed, made, and finally released regardless of what quality the film ends up being. It is now time for Michael Flatley’s soul to be examined, as his own vanity project Blackbird is finally being released four years after it first screened at film festivals, where critics were famously forbidden from seeing and reviewing it – presumably because they already knew that it would receive the absolute thrashing it is currently receiving (among them Mark Kermode, whose hilariously scathing review can now be found making the rounds online).
It is, however, all for good reason. Blackbird is indeed a terrible movie in almost every aspect, from the filmmaking to the performances to the blatant sucking up to Flatley’s ego, and beyond. However, while it is certainly one of the worst movies of the year so far, it is also an absolute unintentional laugh riot, and an absolute goldmine for lovers of bad films that have been waiting patiently for a new legendary addition to Hollywood’s hall of shame.
Flatley – who, in typical vanity project fashion, directs, writes, produces, stars, and largely self-finances the film – is Victor Blackley, a former MI6 operative who retires from the service after his wife is killed. Ten years on, he’s now operating the Blue Moon hotel and bar in Barbados, where much like Rick in Casablanca (he even gets to wear a similar white dinner jacket at one point) he’s made a habit of being known and loved by pretty much everyone from the guests to his staff. One day, though, smarmy businessman Blake (Eric Roberts) checks in to conduct some dodgy dealings involving a stolen formula that is said to cure all known diseases – wait, please don’t click away just yet – but could be dangerous in the wrong hands, and he’s brought along his fiancé Vivian (Nicole Evans) who, surprise surprise, is also a figure from Victor’s past. Now, Victor must decide if he’s to return to the life he thought he left behind, or carry on as though nothing were out of the ordinary.
Plot hardly matters, though, as Flatley is far more occupied with filling his movie with endless vignettes that constantly make him and his character look like the indestructible, irresistible Übermensch he believes himself to be. There are scenes in this movie where he has to fight opponents who are in far better physical shape and stamina than the 64-year-old, but within seconds (and sometimes off-camera, in a money-saving effort with only stock sound effects used to indicate punches and the like), Flatley not only emerges unscathed, but his adversaries have been beaten or shot to death. As unbelievable as that may be, it doesn’t compare to the alarming number of women who are constantly pining for him for reasons unbeknownst to the audience, to where there is an entire scene where one of them just silently walks into his room and immediately disrobes in front of him, hardly saying a single word throughout. As a reminder, Flatley – or, more accurately, his ego – wrote all of this into existence, and it’s almost flabbergasting how self-serving it comes across as, because it’s the kind of wish fulfilment that is only possible if he also happened to have a genie (maybe even Idris Elba’s djinn from Three Thousand Years of Longing) on standby to grant him his impossible wishes.
It would be one thing if Flatley had some sort of magnificent acting ability or screen presence that would make such wildly vain moments worth it, but he really, really doesn’t. The most expression that he gives throughout the entire film is solely in how his hat has been tipped, either to the left, or to the right, or sometimes swapping one out for another right in the middle of a scene. It’s sad when the hat has much more of a personality than Flatley does, who is so wooden that he can barely get through a line of his own awfully written dialogue without looking as though he’s doing the “smell the fart” method that Joey from Friends is best known for. He has absolutely no chemistry with anyone he acts opposite of, with scenes between him and his similarly wooden love interest Nicole Evans feeling like this is the first time that either one of them have met in person, despite having quite the past together. A later scene where he and Eric Roberts – powering through a role he could play in his sleep by now, and probably did here too – are playing poker like it’s a poor man’s Casino Royale all of a sudden, lacks any kind of tension because Flatley’s, erm, flat direction ensures that neither actor is as menacing or intimidating as they perceive themselves to be, which is surely the minimal requirement for an initial hero-villain face-off.
It’s terribly made, awfully acted, horribly written, and just the absolute definition of “bad vanity project” in every way shape or form – but I’m not going to lie, this was a surprisingly fun movie to sit through, for all of the wrong reasons. I can easily see this becoming a new legendarily bad movie in the same vein as The Room or Troll 2, where quote-a-longs at the Prince Charles Cinema in London and out-of-context YouTube clips propel it into the public consciousness, just like it did those movies. There were multiple times where I was laughing out loud in this film, largely from some horrible line deliveries or some random moments of violence that made absolutely no sense, but it was enough to get me through what is otherwise a pretty awful excuse for cinema. I imagine, for many other people hoping to fill that bad movie sweet spot, that Blackbird will have real lasting power amongst audiences, but not for the reasons that the filmmakers were probably hoping.
Even still, it’s definitely one of the worst movies of the year, on a purely technical aspect alone – but you might just come out cackling like the Joker about the absolute onslaught of awful you’d just witnessed.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Blackbird is an astonishingly awful, but often unintentionally hilarious, vanity project for director/writer/star Michael Flatley, whose horrible acting and filmmaking skills, not to mention an onslaught of grotesquely ego-driven vignettes, make it a potential legendarily bad movie in the same vein as The Room, all while still being one of the year’s worst movies.
