BlackMale

*Coughs*

"Blackmail" has driven me to break my IMDb duck. I am usually in broad agreement with the overall scores, if not the individual reviews of the members of this august body. But it has to said folks. An average score of 4.1 is just wrong, Wrong, WRONG.

I was not looking forward to watching this - the cover text was a deterrent and, as others have said, after 5 minutes my finger was hovering over the stop button.

Then I got it - it's all tongue in cheek - a challenge to see how many cliches can be stretched to the furthest (inc goriest & sickest) possible extent and crammed into 86 minutes, overlaid with thick dollop (sorry to be technical!) of black humour. It's the obvious thing to do with a low budget movie, and it works wonderfully. I squirmed at the gore, and laughed as each cliche approached and was played out with hilarious familiarity. It even has a fabled "boot shot". I hope the cast had an absolute riot making it.

If you're into very black comedy, take out your brain and watch this.

A 7 for setting its stall out and executing it (geddit!) in a far classier manner than it suggests on the tin.

And you'll never look at a briar pipe the same again. Guaranteed.

This is a rather hard to find (not on video)film that fits somewhere in the Tarantino-type tradition of wild plot twists, explicit violence and psycho characters who outdo each other in their insanity and malevolence. There's also quite a bit of sick humor. After the first couple of minutes, I was ready to dismiss Blackmale as another low-budget, perhaps made-for-cable thriller, but it does have some originality and humor that makes it a cut above the standard genre flick. Many of the characters are actually entertaining and funny, if you can appreciate such humor. Still, it's hardly a great film and ends up being mainly an exercise in mindless violence.

I saw this film about a month ago, and I have to say it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The reason I seen it in the first place was because I found out that Justin Pierce (R.I.P) was in it, and I haven't seen any of his other films apart from Kids, and Next Friday. And as usual he gave a great performance, and so did the rest of the cast.

The story wasn't particularly good but the way the cast acted they made the film watchable. So I would suggest if you want a film that is fun and not to be taken that seriously, than choose this you might even like it.

What did I just witness? In fact, hold on... 9-1-1, I would like to report a crime. Yes, it is a cinematic crime. You can find the suspects easily by looking up "BlackMale" on IMDb.com. They should be easy to find because none of their careers have taken them anywhere. I just stopped on this movie during a late night channel surf, and it seemed interesting enough. A guy being entrapped by a beautiful young lady; I just wanted to see where it was headed. I later found out that it was headed towards the pits.

Well, the title is silly enough to suggest that the movie in turn wouldn't be any good. Although it had some credible actors in it. Bokeem Woodbine is no stranger, and I certainly remember Roger Rees from "Cheers", but this movie just stunk like nobody's business. The plot and events just kept getting more and more absurd up until the utterly ridiculous ending. Somebody was definitely blackmailed here. I think the actors were blackmailed into being in this movie, but being that it is an indie film, there was no distributor blackmailed into helping produce this junk.

This is a must see film for people who enjoy "off the wall" thrillers. The movie filled with slightly predictable, but truly amazing plot twists. Every character is memorable in this maniac driven film. I think a sequel should be considered. Rest in Peace Justin Pierce.