Long before the superhero boom really took off in Hollywood, at least two brutally entertaining masterpieces of the genre were filmed in Hong Kong: Heroic Trio and Black Mask: Mission Possible. Unfortunately, the former has only been released on DVD so far, while Black Mask has been on the list of media harmful to young people in Germany since 1998. That was changed this week.
Black Mask with Jet Li is off the index – new home cinema edition planned
Black Mask is no longer on the index, reported cut reports a few days ago. The science fiction film about a Super soldier putting on a mask and as a vigilante ensures justice and broken bones can now be published and advertised in Germany in its entirety.
Shamrock Media has already announced work on a home theater release on Facebook. But there is no date yet.
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The film joins a series of cult productions from Hong Kong that have been released uncut in Germany for the first time in recent years, including Ebola Syndrome, The Untold Story, City on Fire and Blast Heroes.
Why the sci-fi action is iconic
Black Mask features martial arts legend Jet Li at the peak of his art. He plays a nondescript librarian who despises violence. In a past life, however, he was part of a top-secret project to create super-soldiers who felt no pain. After one of the members got out of hand, it was disbanded and wiped out except for a few survivors. When Hong Kong is hit by a series of crimes, Li’s hero suspects his former colleagues are behind the crimes. He puts on a mask and becomes the superhero Black Mask.
The hero’s appearance pays homage to Bruce Lee in The Green Hornet. Jet Li already paid tribute to the cinema legend in the 1994 remake Fist of Legend. In Black Mask he then worked again with the legendary action choreographers Yuen Woo-ping (Matrix, Kill Bill) together.
As a pure action film, Fist of Legend should be much more satisfying, because director Daniel Lee relied on a somewhat gaudy editing for Black Mask, which was based on Hollywood films of the time. On the other hand, looking at Black Mask as over-the-top superhero film with interludes that are unusually brutal for the genre, it’s still great fun. Featuring a top-notch HK ensemble (including Anthony Wong Chau-sang and Lau Ching-wan), Black Mask remains an entertaining representative of Hong Kong pop cinema on its last breaths before it slid into a crisis that lingers to this day.