Search form

Hark, hark, this film's a lark...

Just had the pleasure of watching Tsui Hark's Black Mask 2: City of Masks, a loony, loopy movie that made me feel (in the best sense of the words) ten years old.

I never saw the original BM which starred Jet Li, but in this one some guy named Andy On (drugs?) takes over as the genetically messed-over superhero. He's fighting a bunch of grunting wrestlers whose DNA has likewise been altered, giving them bestial powers & uncontrollable metamorphoses into nasty animal hybrids.

For a while back in the 90's, it looked like cgi effects were going to wipe out modest little B-movie genre pix, with sci-fi/fantasy films given A-budgets & big name directors. Then PC's & Macs started making lower-end, lower-priced cgi efx possible. Combine that with Hong Kong style wire work, martial-arts mishegas (choreographed by Woo-ping Yuen, who did the same on Kung-Fu Hustle), cleverly chosen ultra-modern architectural backgrounds and snappy, vivid direction (from Hark, helmer of Iron Monkey, a Tarantino fave) and you have a high-energy nutsoid action flick that's a pleasure top to bottom. The opening credits of multiple silhouetted martial artists going through their paces on a computer screen background get you in the mood right off the bat.

Film takes place in the genetically name 'B City,' evidently western, but populated by a idealized mix of accent-free English-speaking Asians (not dubbed, possibly looped?) and white folks. (The production company logos at the top of the film contain names in both English and Chinese characters, with companies and locations from Hong Kong to Australia and (I think it was) Thailand involved in the film.)

The black-masked Black Mask and villains engage in wire-assisted mid-air slug-outs, effortlessly clamber up walls, and morph on-camera into their semi-human forms: when 'Snake' goes all the way, his legs don't fuse together but turn into a pair of wiggly tentacles, and even the hero grows a feline muzzle when he starts losing it. Then throw in an evil super-computer, a lady scientist (Asian) who goes catatonic at a man's touch and an adolescent white kid shoehorned into the plot for audience identification purposes.

I've always appreciated films that make up in sheer enthusiasm for the material what they lack in bucks. Black Mask 2 isn't cut-rate, but it's still got an enthusiastic, make-believe feel that lets you participate in it by investing your own imagination, as opposed to mega-budgeted Spielbergian/Michael Bay opuses you're supposed to passively consume with an 'oh wow' on your lips. Put this one in your Netflix cue for a guaranteed night of goofy, popcorn-movie fun.

Joe Strike's picture

Joe Strike has written about animation for numerous publications. He is the author of Furry Nation: The True Story of America's Most Misunderstood Subculture.