If there’s anything Bad Drama fans like, it’s a vanity film. They are nearly uniformly driven by the ego of the person behind them, and then they tend to be weird and horrible. Chad R and I are the two big Bad Drama guys in our crowd, and for years we’d been looking for a copy of Michael Flatley’s (!) Blackbird (2018). Eventually we managed to find it squirreled away on YouTube, and finally gave it a watch down in Texas.
It wasn’t all that we hoped. Yes, it was awful, but it was also a bit of a slog. Flatley–yes, the Lord of the Dance guy–had pretensions to making a “serious” version of a Casablanca-type movie, and boy howdy, it’s serious. Flatley, playing the main character who is, of course, the World’s Bestest Spy but now mournful and retired after losing a loved one. Everyone wants him back in the game because, you know, he’s as awesome as Steven Seagal, but he’s so SAD.
Of course, the film opens on the World’s Most Rainiest Funeral. Are those raindrops, or tears? (How artistic!) Everyone looks sad but Flatley is the saddiest. I immediately ughed as the film features that stupid blue color correction all films from the 2010s had. You know someone’s not doing their job when that’s the sort of thing you notice.
Eric Roberts is playing his millionth bad guy and the action, when it comes, is directed so you can’t see any of it. Never give the audience what it wants, I guess.
Anyway, it’s pretty horrible but doesn’t have a lot of juice. You still might want to give it a look while it’s there. Flatley pulled it off market after the critics got a look at it and it can be very hard to find.
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