The best film of 2009

2009 had some insane jump-offs.
Watchmen, Transformers 2, Avatar, The Perfect Sleep, The Tournament,Gamer, etc. But Blood and Bone took it!
If you capture a superhuman performance on camera the results are often wonderful. The physical and character performance of Michael Jai White in this film elevated it and himself to living legend status.
The duel driven character study and narrative arc was lean mean and shot with an almost journalistic videographic lens that made the fanstastic sequences seem even more mindboggling. It's like "This is some real life eye witness news stuff right?" Yet the shots are still composed in a "cinema style" sans any shaky cam or youtube cinematography. Then MJW does something that defies the limits of human design and the overall effect is one of "this s**t is crazy and its REAL but wait it can't be but it is!" Really a visceral effect and it was intriguing to see videography used aesthetically and not merely as a gimmick or cost cutting measure.
All this is ancilliary though. MJW is the man here. Between this and Black Dynamite (AWESOME film) he has officially taken the action hero crown in Holllywood. It is a shame Hollywood has become so emasculated that the action hero no longer has marque support in the industry (and movies wonder why they are losing money?) nevertheless the feat of MJW sitll stands. Like all action hero greats MJW fights in a style that can only exist on sceen. Afterall if some one tries to beat up 6 men at the same time using "realistc" fighting it would look fake because in real life using "realistic" fighting techniques won't allow you to defeat 6 men at the same time (especially if they are using the same techniques). What is so awesome is that he pulls it of at a level I have not seen before. I think he surpassed Van Damme,Bruce, and even Wesley with this performance. He almagamates a street fighting style that fuses american asian and african methodolgies with the obligatory action hero super powers and it is a wonder to behold.
Okay the villain was badass and his sidekick was cool to. The plot and story was so naturalistically distilled through MJW's refined holistic performance that the film really was an exercise in cinema purism using the idiom of the action hero.
This film is for connoisseurs of a classic cinema tradition.