The Iron Mask

It used to be the case that you could smell a Euro pud­ding a mile off. Co-pro­duc­tions between var­i­ous Euro­pean coun­tries, usu­al­ly with a big star name or two attached, they were recog­nis­able by their bland aes­thet­ic cau­tion, num­ber-crunched to appeal to as wide a gamut of undis­cern­ing movie­go­ers across the con­ti­nent as pos­si­ble, eschew­ing artis­tic courage for max­i­mum return on invest­ment for the con­glom­er­ates of film funds and hedge fund man­agers with an oar in.

If the term has large­ly gone out of fash­ion fol­low­ing its late 20^th cen­tu­ry hey­day, the busi­ness mod­el appears to have endured. With Chi­na in pos­ses­sion of one of the world’s largest film mar­kets, and with strict reg­u­la­tions on the num­ber of for­eign pic­tures that can play on its screens, it makes sense that oth­er glob­al play­ers would want a bite of their domes­tic action. With Sino-US rela­tions frosty and pre­vi­ous attempts to play-nice with the likes of 2016’s The Great Wall a bust, Moscow made its move to col­lab­o­rate on a num­ber of joint pro­duc­tions back in 2017.

The Iron Mask is the high­est pro­file offer­ing to date, a film seem­ing­ly stitched togeth­er from stray pix­els and Excel spread­sheets. You can see the pitch: a sequel to a Russ­ian block­buster that made a truck­load of cash on home soil; a forg­ing of West­ern, Slav­ic and Chi­nese folk­lore; a cast made up of British, Russ­ian and Chi­nese tal­ent, all speak­ing their own lan­guages (and lat­er dubbed for each respec­tive mar­ket); and a pair of glob­al super­stars tak­ing pro­duc­er cred­its – and a hefty slab of points – for what looks like a weekend’s work.

To call it a colos­sal dis­as­ter would be an under­state­ment, if lit­tle sur­prise giv­en the wretched­ness of the series’ pre­vi­ous entry, released in the UK as For­bid­den King­dom back in 2015. Direc­tor Oleg Stepchenko returns, this time with a pre­sumed pair of aces in the form of Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger and Jack­ie Chan, who pro­vides his fight team to enliv­en the action amid the steam­punk incoherence.

A pré­cis of the first film’s ​“unfath­omable adven­tures” – effec­tive­ly a mon­tage of 18^th cen­tu­ry car­tog­ra­ph­er Jason Fle­myng look­ing increas­ing­ly con­fused – leads us to the Tow­er of Lon­don, where Jackie’s wiz­ard (?) is impris­oned in a cell with Peter the Great (??), plot­ting their escape from Arnie’s tub­by gaol­er. Sin­gu­lar­ly unfun­ny bantz ensue, before a show­down between the screen legends.

“I’ve been wait­ing for this for a long time,” says the Aus­tri­an Ache Oak, and if the idea of a knock­about between the pair may have looked good on paper 30 years ago… let’s just say this isn’t one for the annals of screen action. In fair­ness to the 73-year-old big guy, it’s hard to tell if the rea­son he doesn’t appear to be in half of his own shots is down to the fact he was only on set for a day, or the sheer inep­ti­tude of the edit­ing around him.

Either way, the duo’s screen time is min­i­mal and – absurd epi­logue aside – you’ve had your lot of the above-the-title stars after 30 min­utes. Cue 90 more of Asy­lum-grade Pirates of the Caribbean non­sense as poor Jason Fle­myng takes the reins, head­ing east (“It seems that some kind of con­spir­a­cy is going on in Moscow!”) towards Chi­na, where the coterie of func­tionary and func­tion­less must face off against ​“the leg­endary princess of the white wiz­ards and the keep­er of the secret of the heal­ing tea.”

There’s lit­tle respite from the film­mak­ing hor­rors on show, an exer­cise in cov­er­age with zero regard for spa­tial coher­ence or the struc­ture of a giv­en sequence, relent­less­ly over-lit to facil­i­tate the del­uge of CGI in every shot. The cast mug their way through the expos­i­to­ry sew­ers of the script, the only laughs com­ing at the expense of Charles Dance’s deliv­ery – and per­haps from Chan and Schwarzeneg­ger as they high-five their way to the bank.