Black Mask


© Steve Honeywell

If you learn nothing else, learn this: Jet Li kicks butt. You probably already know this, but it bears repeating. Even when you know the film is being sped up and he's hanging on a wire for some of the more acrobatic moves, Jet Li kicks butt.

Sure, this is evident in movies like Lethal Weapon 4, but you'll get a much better showing of Li doing his thing in Black Mask, a movie packed with more explosions and fights per minute than any two other action movies you can name. There's a constant series of punches, kicks, jumps, precarious landings on thin objects, explosions, gun play, more explosions, blood, and a few dismembered body parts followed by more punches and explosions. In fact, the film slows down only a few times, and even then, only slows for a few seconds at a time.

So what is Black Mask? More or less, it's a comic book brought to the big screen featuring Li in the title role. Once upon a time, Li was the subject of a genetic experiment that turned him into a super-human killing machine. He and his co-experiment subjects were used to kill off bad guys, drug lords, and other assorted scum. Unfortunately, not everyone in the project managed to hold on to sanity. An incident in which 10 government agents were killed by a renegade superman caused the project to be curtailed. In government talk, that means everybody involved needed to be liquidated.

Knowing his fate, Li fled and started a new life for himself as a librarian. His best friend in his new life is a cop know as the Rock (no relation to the wrestler, one presumes). Rock tells Li (who is either Michael or Simon, depending on who is talking to him) that there has been a rash of killings--all of the drug lords in Hong Kong are being systematically wiped out. Fearing for his friend's safety, Michael/Simon/Li goes into action, and discovers that he wasn't the only super-dude to escape. There are a lot of them still around, and they are planning something big, bad, and nasty.

To protect his own identity, Li dons a goofy little hat and a "mask" that looks like it was cut out of the floor mat of a car. It goes a long way toward indicating just how cool Li is that in this get-up, he still looks cool and menacing. Li starts looking around, protecting his own identity and investigating the problem. Complications involve a sudden infatuation by his co-worker in the library, the presence of his ex-girlfriend with the bad guys, and the continuing struggle to keep his friend alive.

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