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To capitalize on the success of Jet Li's first American film role, the Mel-kicking villain in the last year's Lethal Weapon 4, his hyperviolent Chinese film Black Mask has been released in the West. Li stars as Simon, a former member of Project 701, biologically enhanced super-soldiers created as a last resort against the armies of triad drug lords. Faster, stronger, impervious to pain, and virtually unstoppable, they were also prone not only to severe lack of respect for authority but to mental instability, and were all supposed to have been exterminated after one went nuts and killed a bunch of officers. Simon escaped to make a new life as a pacifistic librarian, only to turn vigilante superhero when the other 701's resurface as narcolumbian mercenaries slaughtering the local competition.
Nominated for 1997 Hong Kong Film Awards in the Best Art Direction, Action Choreography, and Costume & Make-up Design categories, Black Mask should please fans of this kind of thing, with its sci-fi trappings and relentless, balletic fight sequences that would seem derivative of The Matrix had this film not been done earlier and without benefit of computer enhancement. But others may likely find its interminable litany of bullets, explosions, and dismemberment, not helped any by English dubbing laced with laughably misplaced gangsta voices and dialogue (in contrast to Li's thoughtfully read, well-written narrative), boring. You have to respect the talent it takes to pull off something like this, but the same could be said for multiple coronary bypass surgery, and I'm too squeamish and impatient to enjoy watching a few hours of that either. C
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