DIRECTOR: OLEG STEPCHENKO | SCREENPLAY: OLEG STEPCHENKO, DMITRY PALTSEV, ALEKSEY PETRUKHIN | STARRING: JACKIE CHAN, ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, RUTGER HAUER, CHARLES DANCE, JASON FLEMYNG, XINGTONG YAO | RELEASE DATE: APRIL 10TH
Cine-masochists and trash film fanatics may find much to love in co-writer/director Oleg Stepchenko’s The Iron Mask (TIM). Stepchenko hurls viewers eyes first through a frazzled CG laden, sick tinted spiral into ancient China. An accompanying, exposition stuffed narration bombards our noggin with context which, when combined with the visual assault, bamboozles from the outset. Yet, as The Iron Mask progresses it retains a car crash quality that makes it oddly captivating but for all the wrong reasons.
The dislodged plot (set in the 1700s) sees Jason Flemyng’s drippy cartographer/scientist Jonathan Green who, after being tasked to map Russia’s far east, gets embroiled in a plot involving a mystical royal cover-up/conspiracy while en route to China. Meanwhile, Jackie Chan’s wispy chinned “Master” is imprisoned in the Tower of London, along with the titular iron masked character/Russian Tsar who claims to be Charles the 1st. Both plot to escape with the help of Anna Churina’s Miss Dudley, but have to overcome a Schwarzenegger sized obstacle in the guise of Arnold’s rambunctious James Hook; donned in fresh out of panto fancy dress garb.
Stepchenko’s film is crammed with kung fu, mad barons, miffed wizards (a confederacy of which is split by a shape-shifting witch), an international quest for healing tea and a “dragon with massive eyebrows”. That said, The Iron Mask still miraculously manages to often be mind-numbingly dull; quasi-lobotomising viewers as though subjecting them to a defective hypnosis video. For the better part, it gets by on unintentional WTF moments, bizarre camaraderie, cleft characters, playful imagination and relentless ridiculousness (almost becoming inadvertently Pythonesque), but its shambolic cragginess could reduce audiences to drooling agog if left ungagged, or bleeding from the eyes, brain and soul out of boredom.
The first half is fun, in a Golan/Globus way, but there’s still a good third that’s unfathomably naff. With low expectations and lots of alcohol/hallucinogens, TIM could be a dazzling watch, but analytical sticklers (or anyone sober) may raise eyebrows then drop jaws and biros at its defunctness. For TIM is a colossally bungled, appallingly acted clout of sozzled fantasy nonsense that’s frowzy to the point of almost being abstract. It’s often propped up with vibrant bravado but has sets that seem on the cusp of toppling and digitally twitching creatures that looked banged out by accident in 5 minutes on a Spectrum during a GCSE graphics student’s lunch break. Despite all the aforementioned, TIM‘s greatest crime is rendering one fed up for a good forty minutes, which is a challenge given it’s so frequently vivacious, yet bafflingly crap.
