Black Mask (Hak Hap) (1996)

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General		Extras
Category	Martial Arts	Biographies-Cast & Crew Theatrical Trailer-1.33:1, not 16x9, Dolby Digital 2.0 Synopsis
Rating
Year Of Production	1996
Running Time	82:35 (Case: 84)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Programme
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Tsui Hark
Studio Distributor	Magna Home Entertainment	Starring	Jet Li Karen Mok
Case	Top Button
RPI	$29.95	Music	Teddy Robin Ben Vaughn

    And whereas The Matrix was an overrated piece of crud completely lacking in substance that got hyped to the heavens all because of some admittedly cool effects, Hak Hap was probably basically ignored by the movie going audience everywhere but in Hong Kong, which is a great shame as it is a marginally more enjoyable film, even though it admittedly is almost as lacking in substance. But then, that is the essential difference between the Wachowski Brothers effort and Hak Hap: the Wachowski Brothers seem to be too full of their own importance, whereas Jet Li and company take this pretty much tongue-in-cheek, like so many Hong Kong films. The budget was not huge, the story is pretty feeble, the dialogue is fairly woeful, some of the effects are really cheesy and the action is great. Sounds like the prototypical Hong Kong film to me.

    What passes for the story here is pretty derivative and really does not have an awful lot of influence on what actually happens in the film. If you though John Woo managed to unleash significant amounts of ammunition in his films, Daniel Lee goes even further overboard here, although perhaps not quite to the same effect! The Black Mask, otherwise known as Tsui (Jet Li) is an enhanced human (okay, very unoriginal and a bad start), engineered to be a ruthless killing machine by the government by the simple expedient of eliminating his nervous system. No pain means that he keeps on fighting until he dies. He is not alone, as there is a whole squad of these ruthless killing machines. However, Tsui is trying to become human again and has forsaken his designed specifications and become an assistant at a library. Unfortunately, his mates have moved from the government sector to the private sector and have embarked upon a commission job - to eliminate the drug lords of Hong Kong to permit the Colombians to take over (very, very unoriginal). They go by the name of 701 Squad, and all that stands in their way is their former comrade Tsui, who takes on the disguise of The Black Mask to help a policeman friend Inspector Shek (Ching Wan Lau) and to battle 701 Squad. Along the way we have some obligatory half-hearted romantic interest, and some fairly stunning fight sequences. Naturally everything boils down to the basic showdown between good and evil, with the result of...

    Absolutely nothing here that is to be remotely confused with originality and a lot of the action lacks any sort of believability. But in this sort of film, who cares? This is designed as cheap entertainment, and that is precisely what you get. The WOW factor here is basically off-the-scale, even by Hong Kong standards. Whilst some - well, actually, most - of the humour fails quite miserably, one thing grabs you here and that is the fight scenes. It is a typical Jet Li vehicle, in which he gets to beat the living daylights out of a suitably large number of people. If you are looking for serious plot development or serious character development, you are going to be disappointed. But if you want action, then this is why we watch Hong Kong films.

    Terribly cheesy stuff indeed but mindless entertainment par excellence without the need to take itself seriously. Forget Jean Claude Van Damme and look to the ilk of Jet Li - it is far better stuff and without the Hollywood gloss and hype, although you really will laugh at the black mask here - real backyard stuff indeed!

Video

    The transfer is presented in a Pan & Scan format, which is not 16x9 enhanced. This is an absolute travesty, as the film was released theatrically in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. Why have Magna Pacific decided to go with this Pan & Scan butchery, rather than giving us a nice widescreen presentation? Quite a tragic turn of events really. For future reference Magna Pacific, it is widescreen or nothing!

    Just as The Matrix had a certain style to the visual aspects of the film, it would seem that Daniel Lee aimed for a style here too. Unfortunately, I think you need a larger budget than what he had to spend to get away with the style he was aiming for, so this ends up with quite a muted feel to the image and colour. The overall transfer is not really very sharp at all, and definition at times is not really flash. This really needed to be a lot sharper in definition to get away with some of the effects work, which tends to go a little unnoticed because of the lack of really sharp definition and clarity. Grain is something of a problem at times, although whether this is the result of poor compression or simply poor source material is open to conjecture - more than likely both are contributors though. There did not appear to be any low level noise problems with the transfer.

    As hinted, the colours here are quite muted and you will really be battling to find bright, vibrant colour detail here. The result is a quite muted picture that really is not at all natural, and this is especially noted in the flesh tones, which are quite anaemic, and the blacks, which are anything but black. Suffice it to say there is not a chance of oversaturation here at all.

    There did not appear to be any significant MPEG artefacts in the transfer. There did not appear to be any significant film-to-video artefacts in the transfer, although there were some instances of mild aliasing. There were a few film artefacts present throughout the transfer, but nothing really too distracting.

Audio

    There is just the one audio track on the DVD, an English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack, so obviously I listened to it!

    I almost wish that I did not though! Whilst the dialogue is quite clear and understandable throughout the film, the big problem is that it is a dubbed soundtrack. Now I appreciate the fact that there are many, including my sister, that have a complete aversion to subtitled films, but really and truly guys, this is DVD after all. Surely we can reasonably expect the film to be in the original language, with appropriate subtitle options available, as well as having a dubbed option? Is it really too much to ask? As it is the dub really sounds quite unnatural. Oh, and of course there is the inherent "audio sync" problem!

    The music score apparently comes from Teddy Robin and Ben Vaughn, but you really would not know: it is so typically derivative of Hong Kong films that it is virtually indistinguishable from any other of a hundred films. I guess in its own way it is reasonably complementary to the film, but really films such as these tend not to need much from the soundtrack - and that is exactly what happens here.

    This really is a quite average soundtrack, with nothing much to really rave about or to damn. Apart from one fairly glaring drop-out at around 81:24, the soundtrack is free from any distortion or other problems. Since it is not surround encoded, you can cheerfully forget about your surround speakers in this one, as well as the completely superfluous subwoofer. The overall sound picture is quite front and centre, with the result that you never feel a part of the action. The effects work is pretty woeful in terms of sound (visually is not much better in some instances) and some of the foley work in particular is quite unrealistic. But I used to lap this sort of stuff up when I lived in Hong Kong and really cannot complain too much if the Hong Kong studios pander to the cheapest option that the market will bear! Overall, acceptable and nothing more really.

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Synopsis

Theatrical Trailer

• Widescreen presentation
• 16x9 enhancement
• Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack
• music video
• interactive game

• Pan and Scan presentation

    An average video transfer.

    An adequate audio transfer.

    An uninspiring extras package.

    And to really make your day, this comes in the absolute crappiest case that I have yet come across (and the technical description of which I do not know, hence the moniker "transparent something"). The case is so bad that even with the case lying flat on my desk, knocking the case will dislodge the disc from the completely inadequate central lock spindle! You definitely do not want to be sending this sucker through the post. May I humbly beseech Magna Pacific to switch to something far more adequate than this - either the Brackley case or the Amaray case please.

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