The years leading up to the hand over of Hong Kong from the UK to China was starting to show in the pop culture produced at this time. Films that were drenched in paranoia and uncertainty of what the future held under the Chinese Communist Party. This mood reflected in films such as Ringo Lam’s Full Alert and Fruit Chan’s Made in Hong Kong.
There was also a change in attitude in this run up, one where the Hong Kong film industry felt ready to take on the behemoth Hollywood machine at its own game and produce high concept action spectaculars that leaned into the more western style but with that Hong Kong flavour, and as comic book movies were all the rage (thanks to the success of Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989), Hong Kong felt more than ready for the test. So out of this came films like Johnnie To’s The Heroic Trio (1993) and the Tsui Hark produced, Daniel Lee directed Black Mask (1996).
Jet Li was already a huge star in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and soon the world (thanks in no small part to his role in Lethal Weapon 4, which was part of the mass Hong Kong film industry exodus in the run up to or just after the hand over). Whilst this wouldn’t be the last audiences would see of him, his output greatly reduced after this, with only four films starring Jet Li being made between 1997 and the release of Zhang Yimou’s Hero in 2002 (which acted as a career rebirth in the eyes of the cinema going public), as everyone waited for the dust to settle and see if there was even a film industry to return to in Hong Kong.
Tsui Chik (Li) is a librarian who leads a quiet, unassuming life – or, at least, that’s what he wants people to believe. In truth, he was once a member of the 701 Squad, a group of elite combatants produced by a failed super-soldier project. In kind with his former comrades, his central nervous system has been altered to render him impervious to pain. When several of his fellow test subjects resurface and embark on a crimewave under the leadership of their former commander Hung Kuk (Patrick Lung), Tsui is forced to use his extraordinary abilities once more. Donning a costume, he sets out to face his past – as the vigilante known as the Black Mask.
Black Mask has all the bombast and spectacle of a film that thinks it’s the very best at what it does, with explosions and violence breaking out at every given opportunity, but tonally, Black Mask is as mad as a box of frogs. Okay, so this is par for the course when discussing Hong Kong cinema, but in this case, the extremes are just that, veering from farcical to ferocious in the blink of an eye. It’s almost as if they took the “Comic” in “Comic Book” a little too literally.
When saying “they”, of course, we mean Director Daniel Lee and Producer Tsui Hark (who would direct the flawed but enjoyable 2002 sequel Black Mask 2: City of Masks). Tsui Hark in particular was at the height of his career, with nearly everything he touched (and he was touching a lot) turning to gold, only to be halted by the power of the CCP and an uncertain future that would lead to him fleeing to the USA to direct such classics as the Jean-Claude Van Damme features Double Team (1997) and Knock Off (1998).
The presentation from Eureka Entertainment is again top notch, offering multiple cuts of the film (the original Hong Kong cut was watched for the purpose of this review) including a second disc with the rarely seen Taiwanese cut. Loaded with features and commentaries. Black Mask has never looked better, it’s just a shame that the film itself doesn’t quite live up to the presentation, because if it did then we’d be talking about an all time classic, but as it is, it’s a fun yet tonally mixed mixed movie that never really knows what it wants to be, trying to be both… and not always succeeding.
Black Mask is out now on Eureka Blu-Ray
