To date I have not seen Kevin Costner’s HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA – CHAPTER 1/?. I want to see it, I’ve heard good things, and I’m sure it will happen eventually, but there’s another independent western passion project by an actor/director that’s more important for me to catch up on: Viggo Mortensen’s THE DEAD DON’T HURT. Which I also haven’t seen, because there’s another one that’s even more important than that, and it’s Michael Jai White’s OUTLAW JOHNNY BLACK. Of the three he’s the actor I follow the closest, and I even have a t-shirt for this movie because I donated to its IndieGoGo a million years ago. But then it didn’t play theaters in Seattle and when it came to DVD I kept putting it off because it was 135 minutes.

Yeah, I don’t usually complain about length, but this is a comedy western that’s as long as THE WILD BUNCH, and longer than UNFORGIVEN. It sounded like a mistake, and I think it was. But I’m glad I finally saw it. Maybe it’s indulgent, but it has heart.

It’s meant as the spiritual sequel to BLACK DYNAMITE, and as with that one, White co-wrote it with Byron Keith Minns, who again co-stars and does sort of a Rudy Ray Moore impression. This time they’re paying tribute to ‘70s westerns, and BUCK AND THE PREACHER in particular. Though White as director doesn’t get as detailed as BLACK DYNAMITE director Scott Sanders in mimicking the look and feel of the era, he sticks to a classical style and gets a retro feel with all the vintage catalog music on the soundtrack. (The original parts of the score are by Michael Bearden, DROP SQUAD, THIS IS IT and are also very effective).

White’s title character is a bad motherfucker wanted for many crimes (“robbery, horse thievery, improper white women eye contact, kung fu treachery…”). When he meets the Reverend Percy (Minns) on the road and believes him killed during an Indian attack, he decides to steal his identity and hide out in the town of Hope Springs, where Percy was going to take over as pastor. He’s able to pull it off because he read one of Percy’s love letters to nice church lady Bessie Lee (Erica Ash, Mad TV), but he’s more interested in her sister Jessie (Anika Noni Rose, FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY).

Johnny’s ultimate goal is to kill the bank robber Brett Clayton (Chris Browning, 3:10 TO YUMA). We see flashbacks of Johnny growing up in “The First Family of Trick Shootin’,” learning from his beloved father Bullseye Black (Glynn Turman, PENITENTIARY II, HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA CHAPTERS 2 & 3), who’s then killed by Clayton. Pretending to be a preacher brings back memories of his father’s lessons about forgiveness, but don’t worry, Clayton’s a huge fucking racist asshole, he’s not gonna let this be resolved with mercy and peace. Stallone stunt double Pete Antico and DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR director Terry Leonard are credited as the stunt coordinators, incidentally.

The supporting cast includes BLACK DYNAMITE’s Kym Whitley, Tommy Davidson, Buddy Lewis, Kevin Chapman and Roger “The Fiendish Dr. Wu” Yuan. Cedric “I sell drugs to the community” Yarbrough is missing, but has a character named after him. Barry Bostwick (FANTASTIC PLANET dubbed version)’s land baron bad guy has lots of silliness going on around him, but for the most part the villains and the marshals are played completely straight by people who fit naturally into the roles, like Michael Madsen or mixed martial artists Randy Couture, Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone and Josh Barnett.

The movie’s biggest weakness, but maybe what’s most unusual about it, is that it seems more passionate about being an homage to cool westerns than being funny. It uses all the western tropes (chat by the campfire, chat in a jail cell, sassy singer in a brothel) without making jokes out of most of them. The flashback to the death of Johnny’s father is very long and sincerely menacing. Even some of the confrontations meant to be jokes are honestly cool enough that I would love to see them in a serious western. For example, the opening is a straight up homage to BILLY JACK, with Johnny Black intervening when he sees some white dudes beating up some young Indians. He appears out of nowhere, hooks a guy’s arm to stop a punch, and says, “Ya’ll leave them be.”

“Who’s askin’?” asks one of the rednecks.

“I ain’t askin’. I’m tellin’,” says Johnny, and you should see the cold look on his face. The dramatic cue suggests they’re probly offering this as parody, there’s a big laugh line right after he re-creates Billy Jack’s iconic kick to the face, and White is surely aware that doing kung fu in a western, grabbing one guy by the dick and flipping him, is kinda silly. But for me, truly, this all works as legitimate badassery. Maybe modern humans find it laughable for a character to be as cartoonishly awesome and full of swagger as Johnny Black, but fuck modern humans. What do they know? Obviously not much, or we wouldn’t be in this mess. If they’re watching a movie where funky jams come on during a horse chase and they can only laugh at it, not appreciate it being what should happen in all movies, that’s between them and their God, who I gotta say clearly fucked up when creating them.

White is just as adept at comedy bits as at playing the ultimate badass, but the amount of jokes compared to the amount of effort put into the plot is pretty light. It made me laugh, but not as much or as hard as BLACK DYNAMITE, which is 51 minutes shorter. I think most people would agree it could’ve been improved with some tightening, but what I really wish is that it wasn’t a comedy. As much as I like some of the jokes I kinda wish it was less the western version of BLACK DYNAMITE and more the western version of BLOOD AND BONE – a straight-faced cowboy movie that has a sense of humor, but most of its laughs come from how awesome it is. I really think it could’ve worked.

I don’t agree with this at all, but a couple of my friends don’t think BLACK DYNAMITE is a loving enough tribute to Blaxploitation because of its jokes about boom mics and bad acting. OUTLAW JOHNNY BLACK has less of that meta stuff, except for its riffs on the poor depictions of Native Americans in westerns. At first the joke is that they’re white people in wigs doing stereotypical voices, then they escalate to introducing a chief played by the comedian Russell Peters (because he’s Indian, as in from India). I appreciate that they’re making fun of that practice but we’re still having to watch it, it’s definitely my least favorite part of the movie.

So that’s an example of where removing gags would improve it. If it were a serious movie the joke I would miss most is the one about white people saying he looks just like his wanted poster, even though his wanted poster is a picture of a smiling Scatman Crothers. So maybe I’m wrong, it would be a shame to lose that and to have to tone down how many times he slaps a dude, but you could still be funny. You could still use some of the comedy around him being bad at faking being a preacher. You just turn down the silly dial a little and then you get to crank up the awesomeness one. More than a fair trade in my opinion.

Unfortunately I don’t believe OUTLAW JOHNNY BLACK entirely works. But I still kinda like it, because it’s a good showcase for how cool and how funny MJW is on screen, and it’s sweet how much his love for the westerns he grew up on shows through. So when all is said and done it’s an american saga I can get behind.