Black Mask 2: City of Masks appears to have made been made more for American audiences than it has for Hong Kong audiences. The film is an American co-production, written by American writers and Tsui Hark has imported some minor American actors including Tobin Bell, Jon Polito, Andrew Bryniarski, former underage porn star Traci Lords and WWF wrestler Rob Van Dam. The sequel has also been granted a much larger budget than the original had. Moreover, while the first Black Mask was not fantastic beyond its basic explanation of the hero, Black Mask 2: City of Masks has been pumped up into more of an outright comic-book superhero film. (Indeed, this Black Mask pays little attention to the original – there is no mention of Black Mask’s origin as a renegade soldier and he is now given a genetic condition that he must find an antidote to, while there is also the addition of a giant evil brain and its organization who are hunting him for reasons unspecified). Tsui Hark seems to have had the peculiar (and conceptually awkward) gimmick of combining standard Hong Kong martial arts and acrobatics with comic-book superheroics, mutant monsters and WWF wrestling.

Certainly with Tsui Hark in the director’s chair, Black Mask 2: City of Masks is an exhilarating film. This is immediately the case from the opening moments with Andy On being pursued by mercenaries and rolling under an SUV, smashing through its window and jumping onto the roof and up into the trees in rapid succession. It is however a film that has almost entirely been constructed as a series of action sequences rather than any coherent plotline. The subtitle City of Masks, for example, has no meaning in the film – the only person who ever wears a mask is the title character. Almost every single action – from Andy On moving across a room to rolling over a bed – takes places as some kind of martial arts move. Some of the CGI effects are a little flat and the film is surprisingly unevenly edited in a number of places. However, Tsui Hark eventually blends the martial arts acrobatics and mutant superheroics into some way-out set-pieces – battles with a snake creature; a fight that takes place across the backs of a herd of elephants in the middle of the street; Andy On battling Traci Lords’ chameleon creature; the climactic showdown with the various combatants flying, twirling and punching one another in between the struts and arches of a stadium; the final showdown where Andy On melts the villain and a statue into one fused metal lump; and in particular the battle with a spider mutant that takes place halfway up the sides of a mirrored skyscraper with the spider leaping between buildings and even enwrapping Andy On in a cocoon. In the title role, newcomer Andy On certainly has a much more polished and naturally charismatic screen presence than the perpetually wooden Jet Li did in the original.

Tsui Hark’s other genre films as director are:- The Butterfly Murders (1979), We’re Going to Eat You (1980), Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983), Aces Go Places III: Our Man from Bond Street/Mad Mission III: Our Man from Bond Street (1984), Green Snake (1993), Butterfly Lovers (1994), Zu Warriors/The Legend of Zu (2001), Missing (2008) and Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010).