Black Friday

I like Gary Daniels....I think he's a good martial artist with potential to do some really good things, and his acting is waaaaay better than a lot of direct-to-vid action stars. This movie had some "style" in the direction I thought, but all the slo-mo just got boring after a while, and the action sequences were the flattest in the movie. The plot was OK, the acting for the most part was pretty bad with lots of ridiculous dialogue. The big villain, who resembles a giant Rick Rubin was just funny, and the movie's moralizing toward the end was just plain sad. Not to mention the terrible explosion effect. The soundtrack was actually decent and I've seen a lot worse, but I really can't recommend it, except for Gary's two fight scenes. Don't bother....

Not worth seeing. The acting couldn't have been any worse. While the plot wasn't too bad the screenplay and direction were horrible. The background music did not help the cause either. To top it all the film was too dragging. This is one film you would not miss anything not watching.

Martial Artist Gary Daniels is a top drawer attorney who comes home one day to find his family taken hostage by a bunch of thugs. He helps to police on the scene but soon discovers a more sinister scenario at work. It seems that 'The Man' wants to see how a local neighborhood could take a little biological warfare. But as we know shadow government agencies and bio-weapons don't mix but they get more than they bargained for when it is revealed that this lowly attorney is an ex-military butt kicker.

'Black Friday' is a passable action flick with a couple good action sequences. Daniels has skills but still suffers from that most odious action film cliché of bad acting, true the writing and direction can be some of the culprit but since most of the actors in the piece suffer the same affliction we'll strike it up to 'group effort'. Daniels does have the charisma for the action hero though.

The brief alliance between action star Gary Daniels and director Darren Doane resulted in two movies, only one of which got a DVD release. Surprisingly, it was not the conventional, star-studded ULTIMATE TARGET but this oddball experiment wherein the only recognizable name is Daniels himself. BLACK Friday is among the strangest of starring flicks the British Danger Man has in his filmography, and it's far from his best. I'm not sure if I'd declare it one of his worst, but it's definitely not for everyone.

The story: When the home of a black ops agent-turned-lawyer (Daniels) is taken over by entities in possession of a devastating weapon, he must break past the government security to rescue his family.

Director Doane has not made an action movie, here – he's made an artistic thriller. This rough-around-the-edges adventure carries just enough fighting and shooting to earn the label, but rather than pumping adrenaline, its objective is to see how long it can stretch your attention before getting to its eventual twist. While this twist is pretty decent, it's not worth the wait. The film regularly takes three times as long as conventional movies to depict almost any event – whether it's an investigation scene, an assassination, or a character walking down the hallway – and there are many times when the fast-forward button was my best friend. The feature mixes stark (read: cheap) scenery with a schizophrenic soundtrack to create an uneasy mood that I never got used to, ensuring that I never connected with the story.

The DVD cover features Gary holding a sword that's nowhere to be seen in the movie. Beyond this, the sparse action in the film is less disappointing than it is odd. Daniels' initial bout with action coordinator Tsuyoshi Abe is fairly conventional, if longer than the average brawl and paced differently. The showdown with villain Ryan Kos runs even longer – it's at least three minutes long – and is pretty weird for Kos' reliance on an obvious double and an odd sequence wherein the two fighters are suddenly scrapping against a black background. The art show never ends with this movie, even when it comes to something as basic as punching and kicking.

For reasons I can't explain, I went into this movie with fairly high hopes. Maybe someone who approaches it with more even expectations will have a better time, but I am pretty disappointed at having wasted mine. This is not a movie for Gary Daniels fans – it's not even for general action lovers. Should this one fall into your hands, treat it as the experiment it was meant to be.

You know, I always feel really sorry for Gary Daniels for not making it bigger than he has. OK, so he isn't exactly a great thespian by any stretch of the imagination but in terms of martial art skills, our Gaz is without doubt, one of the very best the West has to offer. How sad then that he has invariably found himself landed in some rather mundane affairs at best. I also find it doubly sad to compare the wonderful production values of something along the lines of the criminally underrated, Fist Of The North Star to the vast majority of his subsequent efforts. Such is the case of the film reviewed here for instance, which if the truth be told, more closely resembles a student film in terms of production quality. Shot on cheap video stock, this somewhat bland effort meanders along pretty aimlessly, effectively completely wasting Gary's talents with even the fight scenes themselves hardly ticking the boxes.

I'll give it credit for a nice twist at about the hour mark but even this can hardly compensate for the decidedly lacklustre direction and excessive 'talkiness' that so permeates proceedings.

For fellow Daniels' fans it's probably worth a peek but just don't get your hopes up as this will likely leave you sorely disappointed. A real shame.