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Saturday, March 12, 2016

The Black Knight Returns - a very Indie "mockbuster"

Okay, this movie is "Free" only if you have Amazon Prime, but it's a very independent effort (a budget of $20,000 according to IMDB), so I thought it deserved a review since not many outlets are likely to give it a look, no less press.




From the cover art and title you get the idea that the movie wants to invoke a "Dark Knight" vibe.  That may have been more the distributor's intentions than those of director, .  One can never tell, but what it does is set up audience expectations and, unfortunately, this movie just doesn't meet those expectations.

I feel it is a better film than the 1.6 rating on IMDB makes it seem.  Our hero has a long, storied legacy to live  up and the villains are as cartoonish as one can ask for in a low budget movie.  I think if you placed your expectations somewhere between the camp of the 60s Batman TV series and the more serious incarnations since, you'd have an idea of what you're in for with "The Black Knight Returns".

There are some strong performances and some very weak ones.  A few plot points need more explaining.  (There was a weapon used against the Knights that I didn't understand how it was supposed to be working at all.) Some of these may have actually been explained very well through dialogue, but unfortunately, like many movies under the $100K mark, the audio leaves something to be desired.  The music track is constant and it interferes with the dialogue about 30-40% of the time.

For those looking for violence, there is some shooting and a bit of super hero martial arts, but not as much as you'd expect from an action movie made in 2009.  Most of the blood is digital, which is okay, but at times it doesn't fit the scene.

The lighting seems like maybe three different people were involved.  In some shots it was brilliant and in others just awful.  A few times it was obviously just whatever ambient lighting they had available.  Again, this sort of thing is common on low budget features.  You don't always have control over the lights and sometimes find your ability to change it later digitally wasn't what you expected.

It sounds like I didn't like this movie, but really, it's an ambitious little super hero movie and if you like super hero movies, chances are you've seen all of the big budgeted ones a dozen times.  Give this one a chance instead of re-watching something else while it's still part of your Amazon Prime plan.  You can always switch over to something more familiar 10 minutes in if it isn't to your liking.
MeTV has got some great old Super Hero shows on Saturday evenings also, so  you can make a weekend of it.