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| KUNG FU MOVIE REVIEW: BLACK MASK |
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Yeah, it's one of the silliest movies Jet Li has made (well, I mean, no musical numbers like Kids from Shaolin or crossdressing like Fong Sai Yuk, but silly for it's comic book-noir aspirations) Black Mask: One of the few Hong Kong movies you're likely to run across that actually has a decent score/soundtrack. So naturally, the American release hacked it all out and replaced it with the worst THE WORST mid-tempo mid-quality stock-music-sounding hip-hop they could get their hands on. It's not only bad because it isn't particularly good, but it is such a poor choice in terms of maintaining momentum during the action scenes. Fucking Americans! Always fucking up shit! Anyway This movie has a hospital scene not to be confused with the floating babies scene from Heroic Trio, and a hold-your-breath-while-you-fight-the-bad-guy-in-a-poison-gas-filled-room scene not to be confused with Bodyguard From Beijing. The bad guy, played to perfection by the late Joey Ramone, is a nasty little sonofabitch. I'm surprised they didn't stick in a scene of him eating a baby or something, just to make sure you REALLY knew he was a baddie... The bad gal in Black Mask, well, she's just hot. The love interest - if you could say that any Jet Li movie has a real love interest and not some sort of Female Good Pal - is just the cutest goddamned girl I've seen in a movie since i saw Amelie. The actress who plays Tracy is either a very good actress, or she's a Librarian Assistant Looking for a Hubby in real life, and they just pulled her in off the street. The special effects actually ain't so bad, including and possibly pre-dating some Matrix-like "bullet-time" sort of stuff. The fighting, undercranked as ever, features some of the attitude I love so much from Fist of Legend: the fully-composed Jet Li, striking lighting-fast and precisely, then waiting stone-still for the next attack. Well, and he has a nice haircut and trenchcoat, so that helps too. Black Mask is stereotypical superhero stuff done well. If you like to be regaled by tales of pacifist, rumoured-to-be-homosexual librarians triumphing over evil, you'll simply adore this film. - Tom, April 2002
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| SCENES FROM BLACK MASK | |
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BEST LINE "Are you gay?" - "Don't get on my nerve." MONKS?: No. NO-SHADOW KICK? There was lots of bouncing around in the sewer. SOUNDTRACK: Really decent surfy shit. HK cinema has a long rich tradition of using electric guitar in the cheesiest ways possible. This stuff here is aight. WORTH OWNING? Like I said, the HK version has much better music, but I have yet to see a print as clean as the American release. The HK version is decidedly green-tinted. IF IT WAS A MAD MAGAZINE SATIRE: Bleecchh Mask IF IT WAS REMADE AS A PORN FLICK: Black Ass SEE
ALSO: GREEN HORNET, BODYGUARD
FROM BEIJING, UNIVERSAL SOLDIER. Well, don't actually see
Universal Soldier, just sorta, you know, refer to it. |
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