Blood and Bone

2/7/2016

Profanity is a brutal vice. He who uses it, is not a gentleman. Michael Jai White is one of the baddest men on the planet, so it was inevitable that he would follow in the footsteps of Van Damme, Seagal, Norris etc etc into movies. A martial artist of supreme skill and deadly grace, White brings not only his imposing physique and skills to the film, but also a moody poise to the role of Isaiah Bone, an ex-convict who infiltrates an underground fight circuit to avenge the murder of a friend. There is absolutely no surprises in store here, narratively speaking, but the action, the choreography and the editing are high grade stuff. So strap yourself in and roll with it, let the kinetic fury grab you, and rejoice as another martial arts expert enters the fray late in the day. A te

9/12/2022

Blood and Bone reminds me of a character in The Boondocks who had an irrational fear of going to jail and being anally raped. Here's an action movie where the difference between success and failure, victory and defeat, ultimately lies in the ability, or lack thereof, to avoid being sodomized. From the very start, writer Michael Andrews and director Ben Ramsey put the hero, Isaiah Bone (Michael Jai White), in a situation that could potentially get quite tight. In the prison lavatories, Bone is ambushed by a group of inmates with less than honorable intentions. Bone is of course a euphemism for the male organ (Isaiah is the name of an Israelite prophet from the 8th century BC, but I don't think there's much symbolism there), so we know that the hero is all man, and as such, he's not abo