Iron Mask

Iron Mask
Starring Jackie Chan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Flemyng, Xingtong Yao
Directed by Oleg Stepchenko

Dear "Gigli," "Glitter," "The Last Airbender," "Catwoman," "Battlefield Earth," "Cats," and "The Happening..."

It it with sincere sadness that I inform all of you that you are no longer considered to be the worst films ever made.  You all had a very good run and should be proud of that, but a new film has come to usurp your title, a film that I'm positive will never be matched, and that film is "Iron Mask" - no, not the Leonardo DiCaprio "The Man in the Iron Mask," but just "Iron Mask," whose name itself is also an enigma, but I will explain that in detail later.

"Iron Mask" is a film - if you supposedly call it that - that doesn't really know what it's doing.  There's so many different stories going on that you don't really focus on any one in particular, and nor do you care to.  One story consists of a cartographer (whatever that is) named Jonathan Green (Jason Flemyng) who's traveling to China because bad guys want him to in order to do something, and he brings along a guide named Cheng Lan (Xingtong Yao) - who he mistakes for a "he" but is actually a "she" (way to be racist, "Iron Mask") - and who is actually a queen or something of a land that's ruled by an impostor version of herself who seeks to control a dragon that's been sleeping for many years because its eyelashes grew too big and he couldn't keep his eyes open, and I think who also makes tea, but I'm not entirely sure that's accurate.  Oh, and there's also some mythical little flying creature too.

Then there's Cheng Lan's father, known only as Master (Jackie Chan), who is imprisoned in London for some reason and chained in a tower next to some old guy and Russian Tsar Peter the Great (Yuri Kolokolnikov), who's also imprisoned for unknown reasons and who dons an iron mask (oh, so THAT'S where the name comes from!  How obscure!).  They're being housed there by James Hook (Arnold Schwarzenegger), who dons a costume that looks like it was left over from some high school pirate production, even though they're in London, and even though he speaks with his Austrian accent, and who may or may not actually be the same Captain Hook as in the "Peter Pan" story since they share the same name and costume.  This part of the story involves mostly Peter escaping with a dragon token or something that can wake the dragon up, and who is also supposed to reunite Jonathan with his love, Emma (Anna Churina), somehow.

Then there's the time Emma and Peter spend at sea with a gang of other pirates, led by a little person, who actively seek out the only female on board, as Emma has disguised herself but apparently left her clothes out to dry that the pirates noticed, but then they all become friends when a storm approaches and Peter saves them.

Finally everyone converges (save for Master and Hook) in China, where they fight the impostor queen and a gang of seemingly supernatural giants who can harness lightning, and also the dragon - or a dragon impostor, or whatever - whose only appearance is its head who gives off lightning, much like a Whack-a-Mole figure. 

"Iron Mask" is two hours long...two...hours...long...It shouldn't be two hours long.  It shouldn't be one hour long.  It shouldn't even exist in this or any other parallel universe.  Its mere existence should threaten the time-space continuum and turn itself into a black hole to suck in any living thing it comes into contact with, because my soul felt like it was sucked out of me and sent into the murky abyss of unending silent torture. 

It wouldn't be so bad if the film had any cohesive story.  It wouldn't be so bad if the CGI didn't look so cheaply done that it makes Sy-Fy Channel originals look big-budget.  It wouldn't be so bad if the entire film wasn't re-dubbed for some reason, as there's several American actors who look like they're speaking English, but are dubbed so terribly it's nauseating.  It wouldn't be so bad if Jackie Chan and Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't have glorified cameos (seriously, they're in the film for like twenty minutes entirely, and whose subplot is all but abandoned after the forty minute mark).  It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't exist at all.

There's some films that are so bad they're good, and then there's others that are so bad it's just...so bad...and that's "Iron Mask," a film that doesn't deserve the title of "film," but rather the title of "dumpster fire trash," much like most of 2020.

The Score: F