Black Mask (1996)

Black Mask (1996)
Chinese Title: 黑俠
Translation: Black Chivalry

 

Starring: Jet Li, Lau Ching-Wan, Karen Mok, Françoise Yip, Patrick Lung Kong, Anthony Wong
Director: Daniel Lee
Action Director: Yuen Woo-Ping, Dion Lam, Ku Huen-Chiu

 

Following the success of Lethal Weapon 4 and Jet Li’s warm reception by critics and audiences alike, it was assumed that he would go the same path as Jackie Chan and have some of his Hong Kong films imported and released to American theaters. In Jet Li’s case, things were a little trickier. Many of his films were period pieces, which might have had limited theatrical appeal, even to action fans. Then there was the extreme use of wire stunts in most of his films, which mainstream audiences were not used to at that point. Moreover, while Jackie Chan represented his own genre of action-comedy, Jet Li’s movies were a little more mired in Hong Kong conventions. Even his modern action films—many of which were produced and/or directed by Wong Jing—had their moments of sheer WTF that might have thrown American audiences for a loop.

For example, My Father is a Hero would have been a good choice, save the Yo-Yo Sequence at the climax. High Risk would have gotten good marks for its blazing pace and over-the-top action, but some of the slapstick and the snake sequence would have confused a number of viewers. Bodyguard from Beijing was conventional enough that it might have worked with mainstream audiences. All of those movies eventually saw stateside release, albeit under new titles with substandard dubbing and generic new musical cues. Fist of Legend would have been the best, especially if they had a good marketing campaign to promote Li as the next Bruce Lee—I’m sure that Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story was still fresh enough in people’s minds that I might have worked.

Beyond that, Black Mask was arguably the best movie to import to test the waters. It has a modern setting, lots of violent action and a visual aesthetic that might have reminded viewers of the successful Blade, plus it lacked some of the goofier moments of comedy that popped up in his other films. It did mediocre business: 12 million dollars during its American theatrical run[1]. By that point, distributors simply opted to release Jet Li’s other films directly to video, so American viewers wishing to see Jet on the big screen would have to wait for his Hollywood films.

The premise of the film is pretty simple. Jet Li plays Tsui Chik, the member of the 701 Squad of super soldiers. Tsui and his team have undergone experimentation that has left them impervious to pain and with enhanced speed, strength and reflexes. Basically, Captain America level stuff here. The Squad decides to betray the government[2] that created them, so Tsui Chik confronts the Army by himself as his compatriots make a run for it. He successful escapes the base and flees to Hong Kong.

Some years later, Tsui is living a solitary life as a librarian. His best friend is Shek “Rock” Wai-Ho (The Executioners’ Lau Ching-Wan), an inspector for the Hong Kong Police. Inspector Shek is assigned to a case in which some organization is systematically slaughtering all of the drug lords in the city. We see one group of drug dealers led by Ricky Tai (Dragon Fight’s Henry Fong Ping) called in for a meeting with the other kingpins, only to stumble upon a mass grave. Tai ends up with a bomb surgically implanted in his chest. When Tsui Chik finds out about this, he begins to suspect that his old comrades are still around.

Shek’s assistance is requested by King Kau (The Heroic Trio’s Anthony Wong), the last surviving drug lord in Hong Kong. The dealer-killers have already massacred his family and are now after him. That evening, the 701 Squad members lay an ambush at the construction site that serves as King Kau’s base of operations. Shek and his team are astonished to learn that the killers are not only armed with high tech gadgetry way beyond the scope of your common drug dealer operations, but that these people shrug off their limbs getting severed as if they were a simple flesh wound. At this moment, Tsui Chik—now dressed to look like Bruce Lee’s Kato—intervenes and kills several 701 killers and stops a honeypot assassin (Françoise Yip of Rumble in the Bronx) from killing King Kau with a razor-sharp garotte. That assassin is Yeuk Lan, who was Tsui Chik’s closest friend and (possibly) love interest when he was still part of the team.

Yeuk Lan figures out that the crusader in black is Tsui Chik and informs the current leader of the 701s, Commander Hung (Superfights’ Patrick Lung Kong). Commander Hung and his men ambush Tsui Chik outside of the library he works at and demand that he join them. Tsui gives them the proverbial finger, so they try to kill him. Complicating things is the fact that his co-worker, Tracy (Karen Mok of Fallen Angels and So Close), is a partial-witness to all of this, so Tsui now has to keep her hostage at his hideout while he takes on the 701 Squad alone.

The plot for Black Mask is serviceable stuff. Bad guys are killing other bad guys in order to monopolize the drug market. Pretty standard stuff. The fact that the former are genetically-enhanced super soldiers is a little novel, but just that. The film mainly stands out for its action sequences and its strong, gory violence. Seriously, how this film did not score a Category III rating in Hong Kong is completely beyond me. Limbs are severed. Throats are slit. Blood is splattered all over the sets. People are doused in acid on multiple occasions. We even see a pair of severed legs allegedly belonging to a character’s daughter. That’s just mean. This is easily one of the most violent Hong Kong action films of the entire 1990s.

The violence of course occurs in the context of some high-octane action sequences brought to you by the legendary Yuen Woo-Ping, with the assistance of Dion Lam (The Storm Riders) and Ku Huen-Chiu (14 Blades and Shadow). Like Bodyguard from Beijing and High Risk, much of the action involves Jet Li using guns, which may disappoint some viewers. But there are some nice moments of hand-to-hand action. Jet Li does some wire-assisted fisticuffs during the construction site set piece, complementing his wushu with razor-sharp CDs. In a later fight, an injured Tsui Chik has to fight Yeuk Lan in a network of pipes atop a building.

The best fights come at the end. First, Jet Li fights a Caucasian 701 soldier who is a kicking dynamo. The two trade lots of great bootwork while simultaneously avoiding lasers being fired form turrets all over the room. The soldier is played by Michael Ian Lambert, who would fight Jet Li again in Danny the Dog several years later. Jet Li then has a final showdown with Commander Hung. This is one of those everything-but-the-kitchen-sink fights, which involves railguns, giant cables with live electricity, poison gas rooms, and a ginormous gauge of hypodermic needle. Some of the actual martial arts moves are copied from Li and Yuen’s work on Fist of Legend, so experienced fans may feel a bit of déjà vu. But the fight is fast and inventive, so it remains enjoyable throughout.

Black Mask did well with American critics, who praised the inventiveness of the fighting and Jet Li’s natural skills—ironically, this is probably in his bottom ten movies to actually showcase said skills. Nonetheless, if you can handle the violence—much like Blade, this is one over-the-top gory film—you’ll have a few good fight sequences to watch and Jet Li’s natural charisma to enjoy. This was on the “Classics” list that a friend of mine and I had put together; its inclusion was due to a combination of the bootage and the dubbed profanity, which we thought was hilarious. Definitely a turn-off-your-brain sort of film.

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[1] - I myself caught it twice in the theater. Once on opening weekend and then again when it came to the dollar theater.

[2] - The film never explains which government had actually created them.

Shadow (2018)

Shadow (2018)
Original Title: 影
Translation: Shadow

Starring: Deng Chao, Betty Sun, Ryan Zheng, Guan Xiaotong, Hu Jun, Wang Qianyuan
Director: Zhang Yimou
Action Director: Ku Huen-Chiu (credited as "Dee Dee")

Shadow marks acclaimed director Zhang Yimou's fifth action-oriented film, and fourth wuxia film (should you consider Curse of the Golden Flower to be one). Once more, the man has proved himself to be a powerful visual storyteller, a master of deliberate pacing, and a great filmmaker in general. While those who crave action that pushes the actors' physical skills to their limits may be left cold with this one, there's no denying Zhang's endless imagination for both visual tics and doing different things with action than your average sword hacking and spear poking. While not my favorite of his wuxia films, it's still a piece of art and should be appreciated by most fans of the genre.

The movie begins by telling us that in Ancient China, court intrigue and frequent assassinations made it necessary for important officials to use surrogates and body doubles, known as Shadows. Their lives were expendable and for the most part, are completely forgotten by history. Our story, set in the Three Kingdoms era  (I think, according to the end credits) tell the story of the Commander (Deng Chao, who played Andy Lau's eunuch partner in Detective dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame), who has arrived at the palace of the King of Pei to inform his highness that the city of Jing, located in Pei territory but occupied by enemy forces, is to be fought over in a gentleman's duel between the Commander and Yang (Hu Jun, of Bodyguards and Assassins). If the Commander wins, the opposing forces will withdraw from the city. The problem is two-fold: first, the Commander lost a duel to Yang a year before, and still hasn't completely recovered from the wound he sustained. Second, the King of Pei (Ryan Zheng), isn't too thrilled with his Commander's decision. The kingdom isn't particularly strong at the moment, and the uneasy alliance with the neighbors is the only thing keeping Pei from getting trounced. So he has the Commander demoted and reduced to commoner status.

What the King of Pei doesn't know is that the Commander is actually a shadow. The real Commander was indeed injured in battle, but not only hasn't recovered from his wounds, but has gotten progressively worse. So he hides in a cave-like cell accessible from a hidden passage in his quarters, where he bides his time and directs his Shadow as needed. Things quickly grow complicated for the kingdom, with the shadow determined to fight the duel with General Yang, despite lacking the martial prowess to win; an insulting marriage proposal made to the King's sister from Yang's son; and the Machiavellian schemes of the Commander, still hiding in the shadows. Blood will be spilt, and very quickly.

First off, the film is as beautiful to look at as any of Zhang Yimou's other movies. In contrast to Hero's vibrant reds, blues and white; House of Flying Dagger's greens; Curse of the Golden Flower's golds; and The Great Wall's color-coded armor, Shadow goes with black, white, and grey. The entire movie is set in overcast and rainy weather, which actually is a plot point and not just an aesthetic choice. Palace decorations, robes, armor, and everything else is black, white and grey. And yet it never tires the eye or seems drab and ugly, thanks to the men in charge of lighting (Zhao Xianzhang) and cinematography (Zhao Xiaoding). Moreover, he doesn't go for that stark, washed-out look in which *everything* looks like it's in black and white, which can get old and boring quick if not used in the right film. You can see the color in the actors' faces, and when they bleed, it's as red as it *should* be; it's just their surroundings that stick to the color scheme.

The acting is fine, avoiding the usual pitfalls of people being so stoic that there's no way to relate to them, or so full of treachery that it's hard to root for anyone. For the most part, Zheng Dao's Jing is a compelling character, a man raised with no purpose other than to impersonate someone else and have no real identity. His only wish is to see his mother again, whom he hasn't seen in decades since he was plucked from his hometown for training. Betty Sun's performance is subdued, as in keeping with the character of most married women of the period, but she still projects both pity for Jing, devotion to her real husband, and a growing passion that she (guitily) feels for Jing. The Commander, also played by Zheng Dao, is the real power behind the kingdom of Pei, realizes it, and the months in isolation have allowed those feelings (and his wounds) to fester into madness. The King comes across as being weak for most of the film, not too much unlike the Emperor in The Assassins and The Lost Bladesman.

Speaking of blades, the action here is quite different, although not quite as compelling as I'd hope it was. I think House of Flying Daggers  had the best action for a Zhang Yimou film, with Hero coming in second place. It was solid in Curse of the Golden Flower, but took a backseat to court intrigue. The Great Wall was more about spectacle than actual choreography. This one seems to be somewhere in between Curse and Great Wall. Most of the fighting in the first two acts are brief training duels. The point of interest here is that the signature weapon is the Pei kingdom is the umbrella. That strikes me as being an odd touch, especially in those early scenes where they train with paper umbrellas. But then you get to the big action sequence in the third act, and the paper umbrellas are replaced with umbrellas made of flexible blades. There's a great image, similar to one in New Legend of Shaolin (1994), in which the forces of Pei slide across the watery streets of Jing, sitting in one bladed umbrella while using a second one as a shield. The umbrella becomes a symbol of both water and soft styles, in comparison to the hard style of the Yang's signature weapon: the Kwan Do.

Ku Huen-Chiu, best known for 14 Blades (2010) and The Four trilogy, does the action direction here. The choreography isn't particularly complex, which is a shame. One-on-one duels are over almost as quickly as a typical samurai duel, in few, economical movements. What I liked about this is the idea of bringing back the philosophy of countering hard with soft. While the umbrella is a soft weapon, the people of Pei insist on using it as a hard one. Therefore, they can never fight past the Yang's kwan do skills. It is through Betty Sun's character that they apply a more feminine apprach to their movements that they can best their enemies. While the idea of hard defeated by soft is common in any film that deals with tai chi, the effectiveness of feminine movements is interesting and reminiscent of classics like Clan of the White Lotus and Daggers 8. I just wish more, choreography-wise, was done with that idea.  

I loved the visuals, liked the story and the characters, and thought that the action was pretty good. It's enough to make me consider Shadow (2018) to be a minor classic and hope that Zhang Yimou continues making wuxia films in the future. It may not have been his original genre as a director, but he's proven to be rather adept at it and can turn anything he touches into a visual masterpiece, at the very least.