When a film that should have a certain pedigree falls absolutely flat, it’s disheartening to see some of your favourites involved in such a mess.

I’ll never count Jackie Chan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rutger Hauer, or the underrated Jason Flemyng among my favourites, but they didn’t deserve this.

Iron Mask is a co-production with makeup, styling, sequencing, plotting and acting so terrible that you’d be better off finding entertainment in your kid’s socially distanced school play.

The plot, if you can call a jumbled array of loosely connected points that, follows a cartographer in the early 1700s who is seeking to map the Russian far east. But when he’s forced to move to China, he confronts a Dragon Master.

It’s convoluted, confusing, and mostly it’s just plain stupid. Iron Mask is neither B-movie enough to be funny or entertaining enough to be trash blockbuster.

It’s inane, senseless, and does a disservice to everyone involved. I couldn’t believe these incredible action heroes of old signed up for this one.

With Arnie’s fake moustache and terrible hair, Jackie Chan’s four-foot grey mane, and the infantile costumes, one has to wonder how this ever got made.

When the Razzie nominations were announced, Arnie made the list. But I think a mistake was made — This stinker deserves to sweep this year, because there has been nothing worse I’ve had to sit through.

0.5/5 Stars