Black Friday

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.

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.

Holy macaroni! What a waste. Gary does perhaps 10 seconds of watchable martial arts in this entire movie, so if your're a fan, there is nothing to hesitate about, buy it :)

For all you non-fans, stay away, movies like this gives you the inspiration to crash your apartment..

Picture quality: Terrible Sound quality: Terrible Acting: Terrible Effects: Terrible Story: Terrible Fight scenes: Terrible Gary: Wonderful, as always.

0 out of 10

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.

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.