Highly Overrated But Still Good

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Review: This movie looked cheap and the acting was pretty terrible. The Kato looking caped crusader was awful and the storyline was also not that well put together. Basically, someone is going around taking out all of the drug lords so to protect his identity, Jet Li puts of a black mask to help them. He then finds out that the murders have something to do with his old squad, who he escaped from at the beginning of the film, so he ends up on a one man crusade for justice. Sounds interesting, but it's not! The annoying music and bad action scenes really made this film hard to watch. The fact that no one knows who the caped crusader is, made me laugh because it's obvious right from the beginning. Personally, I think that Jet Li should just put this down as a bad day at the office. Terrible!Round-Up: I couldn't help but laugh at the sound effects through this movie. They made it seem really cheap and it was hard to take the storyline seriously. Anyway, the big showdown at the end was weak even though there is a big build up throughout the movie and it seemed to go on forever. On the plus side, the movie is pretty short so you don't have to put up with it for that long. Now that I've only got a couple of Jet Li movies left to watch, he has definitely made more bad movies than good, which is a shame because it's not due to his acting or martial arts skills. Its basically down to bad choices which will hopefully be rectified in the latter part of his career.Budget: N/A Worldwide Gross: $12.5millionI recommend this movie to people who are into their Jet Li movies about a caped crusader who protects his identity whilst fighting against drug lord murderers. 1/10

(17%) Yes the action is frenzied, and yes there is some enjoyment to be taken from the silly - and quite violent - ideas. but this quite honestly is a pretty awful movie. The plot is totally nonsensical, the direction/editing is uneven and choppy, the script in general is dire, and all the characters may as well be from Saturn or another dimension because they sure aren't human. If you can make it until the end then the final fight with evil Asian John Lennon and Li is one of the films very few highlights, but overall this feels too much like the product of an adolescent boy written between his homework, video games and some you know what.

American audiences saw Asian martial arts superstar Jet Li kick around Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in director Richard Donner's "Lethal Weapon IV." The success of the third "Lethal Weapon" sequel and Jet Li's performance as a resilient Oriental villain prompted Artisan Entertainment t dust off a 1996 cliffhanger that Li had made for executive producer Tsui Hark. Happily, Artisan has provided a new, surprisingly well-synchronized English language dub of the original Chinese dialogue. Of course, most of the voices still sound dubbed, but the words match the lips for the most part. Further, Artisan has saturated the high-octane action with a funky line-up of gangsta/techno rap rhymes that accentuate the rhythm of the movie. Connoisseurs of hyperkinetic Hong Kong actioneers should get a kick out of Jet Li's first starring role in the U.S. Altogether, "Black Mask" qualifies as a must-see melodrama that showcases Jet Li's skills and personality.Basically, "Black Mask" depicts the life and death struggle between a mysterious superhero and the forces of evil in a by-the-numbers, formulaic action thriller. As a member of an elite commando unit, Michael (Jet Li) is a top-secret, super-soldier from Project 701, a scheme designed to turn out biologically enhanced assassins virtually immune to pain. According to the introductory voice-over narration, the Red Chinese have injected these people with serum that triggers some unhappy side effects, such as psychotic rages and an abruptly abbreviated life span. Washing their hands of the ill-fated experiment, the government then tries to kill the warriors. Michael and many of his cohorts escape captivity on mainland China and flee to Hong Kong. At first, Michael believes that nobody, including his old girlfriend, Yuek-lan (Francoise Yip of "Rumble in the Bronx"), had survived the ordeal. Masquerading as Simon, a mousy Clark Kent type librarian, Michael resolves to re-educate himself about all things normal and hides out in the book stalls. Along the way, he befriends a stubborn police detective (Lau Ching Wan) with whom he plays chess.Unfortunately, Michael learns to his chagrin that several 701 survivors have embarked on a murderous killing spree, knocking off high profile Hong Kong drug lords and corrupt government officials. These project 701 ruffians are fortune cookies not easily cracked. They take a licking and keep on ticking. Bullets don't faze them. Their methods appear as unsavory as they are resourceful. One defiant drug dealer shows the authorities a box containing the severed legs of his daughter. Evidently, the hoodlums mailed the box to him to ensure his support. Another crime lord discovers that the villains have implanted a bomb in his chest near his heart. When surgeons try to defuse it, they cannot distinguish between the wires and the arteries. When they do cut the wires, half of the hospital vanishes in an explosion. These fiends plan to blackmail the government into supplying them with the antidote for their illness.Donning a cardboard mask, a fedora, and a chauffeur's suit, Michael retaliates in classic vigilante "Death Wish" style. He relies on his wits, his athletic grace, and his mini-discs which he spins through the air with the same effect as throwing stars. (Anybody remember the 1990 movie "I Come in Peace" where Dolph Lungren faced off with aliens who used compact discs as lethal killing devices?) The bad guys often refer to Michael as 'the compassionate one.' Along the way, Tracy (Karen Mok) finds herself drawn into a vortex of action when she survives a deadly massacre in the library. Michael takes her hostage, but the bizarre relationship takes a turn, and she becomes his girl Friday. Meantime, audiences get to sneer at the devilish Commander Hung, a long-haired psycho villain played to perfection by Patrick Lung Kang.A quartet of scribes has assembled an entertaining but formulaic script that bristles with more action than most Hollywood action franchises. Based on their work here, Tsui Hark, Koan Hui, Teddy Chen, and Joe Ma could have written a better "Batman" epic that the idiots that churned out "Batman Forever" and "Batman and Robin." Admittedly, "Black Mask" looks like a hodgepodge of B-movie protagonists. You can spot the plots of "Batman," "Universal Soldier," "Solo," "Bullitt," and "The Terminator" in the wildly fluctuating storyline. Ostensibly, this rapid-fire yarn look like an Asian version of any Alexander Dumas costume tale about mistaken identities. The scenarists refuse to restrict themselves to one genre. Instead, they shift gears, alternating between a horror chiller, an apocalyptic sci-fi thriller, a comic book superhuman escapade, a screwball romance, and a 1940's neo film noir crime story. Sure, all of this is silly, shallow, and superficial when it isn't drenched in blood and gore. Nevertheless, "Black Mask" delivers these elements with such style and artistry that you cannot help but enjoy it.Martial arts champion Jet Li brings his boyish charm along with a dancer's fluid locomotion to create quite a hero. He combines Jackie Chan's agile athleticism with Chow Yun-Fat's dramatic talent. When he goes into action against the villains, look out! As Michael's pal, Lau Ching Wan turns in a solid performance as a stubborn HK cop named Rock who initially thinks that Michael has nothing to do with Simon. Sophomore HK helmer Daniel ("What Price Survival") Lee slackens the pace occasionally to accommodate a screwball romantic subplot between Karen Mok's ditzy librarian Tracy and Michael. Wisely, Lee never takes these supercharged, adrenaline-laced antics too seriously. The library scenes have a sitcom quality, which differ from other scenes. Several critics have observed the resemblance between Jet Li's Michael and the late Bruce Lee's Kato from the ABC-TV series "The Green Hornet." The filmmakers bring up the same point when Tracy admires Michael.Make no mistake, "Black Mask" is pretty gory stuff. Daniel Lee directs in much the same twister fashion as Michael Bay of "The Rock" and "Armageddon." Lee rarely lets his camera linger on shot. "Black Mask" is outrageously plotted, often campy, but exciting, ultra-violent pulp nonsense.

I have no idea why this flick is getting such a bad rap by so many IMDb users (Some are saying it's his 'worst movie ever.' What?? Haven't any of you seen Cradle 2 The Grave?) My favorite criticism is that the plot is totally stupid, and just an excuse to hang all of the action sequences on. Duh! What the crap were you expecting from a Jet Li movie? Did you honestly believe that someone thought up the story, then just loaded it up with action? Of course not! Black Mask is awesome, wall-to-wall action throughout nearly it's entire running time. It's also deliciously gruesome, and we get plenty of severed limbs, decapitations, and creative ways of watching the bad guys (and quite a few innocent people, too!) get slaughtered. Most of Li's other martial arts films are nursery-school when compared to Black Mask; there is no holding back on the gratuitous violence, bloodshed, or action sequences whatsoever! And that made me a happy camper. Again: if you go into a Jet Li movie expecting magnificent dialog and an intriguing plot, you are going for the wrong reasons. Black Mask is probably my favorite of his movies (though, beware of the horrendous dubbing).