Not so bad, but not so good either...
With T&T and Legend of Zu, Tsui Hark prooved once again that it's still possible to be creative in Hong-Kong. With Black Mask 2, it's still another attempt in the same direction. Unfortunately, this time good ideas on the paper can't be transformed into convincing images. Lack of money, lack of interest, Black Mask 2 is an interesting movie, but it fails where it was first aimed to hit: as an entertaining hero movie.
The problem isn't really the poor acting of the wrestlers. After all, it's a super hero movie, with good guys, bad guys, and no Oscar at the end. Wrestlers knows how to overact and play bad guys as well as good guys. The problem is that we don't really know where are the stakes. Black Mask must save the world from genetically modified wrestlers looking for some popularity ? Come on... The movie is not thrilling just because what is happening during 90% of the movie is not thrilling.
So even if the special effects are not so bad, even if some action scenes are pretty cool, even if the movie is full of ideas, it's not enough to make us forget that it's boring. For such a short movie, it's really annoying. I don't say that it's as boring as a James Ivory movie of course. But for a Tsui Hark, it's a bit disappointing.
There is still enough in BM2 to have some fun. Marco with her guy's name is cute and brings some humor in the movie, even if it's not hilarious. Even if special effects are too obvious, some of the Yuen Woo-Ping chores are efficient. Then of course, there is a will to rewrite the codes for hero movies and to get as close as possible as a live comic book.
Finally, BM2 is a very uneven movie, that you may love as much as you may hate it. It tries to mix too many things with too little budget, leading to an interesting cheap-but-crazy action flick.
