Black Friday

This film is probly the worst Gary Daniels film to date, although i have seen only the ones his fans seem to love most, u know the 5 pointers and so on. As this is the case i will advise anyone who sees this to instantly turn the box over so no-one else can see the attractive cover which is made up of pictures from his different films, and make the mistake of renting it. Firstly the plot was poor, action was bad, the dialogue was really,really slow and when i thought the movie had finished, after a black screen came up for something like 30 seconds or so,it came back on for another 5 mins which was really wierd. Ther is only two marshall arts fights in this film, the near beginning fight which is real good and the end fight which is real bad. so the odds are u'll despise this film and never watch another Gary Daniels Film again, but my advice is to keep hoping he'll get a new agent or somthing, star in a jet li blockbuster and make us brits proud.

Let me start by saying that I think Gary Daniels is a great martial artist and a good actor. Unfortunately, his martial arts skills and acting ability can't save this lame flick.

The box cover for Black Friday shows Gary Daniels holding a sword, but he never uses a sword in the entire film. In fact, a sword never appears in the film at all.

The beginning includes a long scene between Gary and an Oriental woman that has absolutely no significance to the plot at all.

The pacing is so slow at points that I started fast forwarding through it. This is compounded by the overuse of slow-motion sequences throughout the film. There's even a mind-numbing fifteen minute scene using a wide-angle camera shot of Gary and another actor sitting on a bench talking.

There are two overly long fight sequences that are poorly staged and poorly filmed.

There's also a laughably bad explosion scene that looks entirely fake.

Another bad aspect of this film is the blaring music that accompanies almost every scene. A good sound track can enhance a film, but here it's just plain distracting.

A bad script and poor direction make this flick one to skip.

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....

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.

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.