Michael Flatley’s vanity spy movie, Blackbird, has been a rumour flapping around the internet since the former Riverdance king treated private audiences to preview screenings in 2018. But now Flatley has seemingly concluded that post-pandemic cinemagoers have not suffered enough.
With Flatley – writer, director and star – mugging his way through the action as a sort of Irish-American 007 constructed from Pizza Express doughballs, the film is as hysterical as anticipated. His character Victor “Blackbird” Blackley, punches villains, snogs his love interest and goes full Roger Moore eyebrow-wag at the roulette table.
The film was largely financed by Flatley himself, and he has hewn from celluloid a monument to his ego. He portrays a former spy who has retired to the Caribbean after his love interest dies. Blackley’s gang of super-operatives – “The Chieftains” – have gone out to pasture with him, but apparently they, along with the rest of the free world, pine for Victor to get back in the spying game. And when it’s revealed that a coven of super-baddies is planning to unleash a biological weapon, what choice does he have?
Much of the film is unintentionally hilarious. Did Flatley, for instance, know how ridiculous it would be for him to wear a variety of hats each tilted at precisely the same angle? The look he’s going for is seemingly Peak Sinatra, but the effect is more “Charlie Chaplin strapped against his will to a sunbed”.
Then there is the dialogue. Consider the final big face-off between Victor/Flatley and villain Blake (Eric Roberts ) and some stereotypically “Middle Eastern” terrorists. Flatley clenches his jaw, narrows his eyes and says… “Let’s dance.”
Blackbird gives off a peculiar energy, in that the rest of the cast – which includes Patrick Bergin and Game of Thrones’s Ian Beattie – are obviously under orders to be in absolute awe of Victor, even though the actors appear to look peeved throughout. This slightly feverish tone is the perfect final piece in a turkey that, once social media gets hold of it, is sure to spread its wings and soar.
In cinemas from Friday September 2
