“Black Mask” starring Jet Li (“Fearless”, “Once Upon A Time In China”) combines the martial arts genre with the superhero genre. It’s got a fairly flimsy plot but I like the stylish look and the action sequences.

Jet Li stars as Tsui Chik, a man that was part of a secret project to create super soldiers. After they proved to be difficult to control, the order was given to terminate them. Tsui Chik fled to Hong Kong where he lives as a quiet librarian. However, when he sees that other super soldiers are causing problems in the city, he becomes a masked hero in order to stop them.

Li seems perfectly suited for the role as he’s small and slender build mean that we can believe that he would be able to successfully hide as a librarian. He’s not got muscles bursting out of his clothes like Schwarzenegger (“Commando”). Li also gets plenty of opportunities to demonstrate his incredible fighting skills. The Black Mask costume is based on Bruce Lee’s Kato from “The Green Hornet” tv series. The other characters are very forgettable and that sadly includes the bad guys. After I finished watching it, I couldn’t really tell you anything about any of them.

“Black Mask” starts off with a bang and it has some enjoyable shootouts and fistfights throughout. The movie looks really good with a blue tint to a lot of it. If you’re a fan of Jet Li then this is worth checking out. As a superhero movie from this era, it’s not as good or memorable as “The Rocketeer”, “The Shadow” or “The Crow”. If you’re not very familiar with Li’s work, you may want to check out some of his other movies first. This is definitely not his best but I think it’s still good.