What the trailer didn't tell me was that submachine guns are at least as much the star of Black Mask as Jet Li's flying fists and feet. The kung fu scenes, spectacular as they are, huddle near the end of the film. And by that time, hundreds of unknown villains and cops have been chopped to bits by bullets. The graphic gore deadened my senses so effectively that my appreciation for Li's legendary quickness and innovative defensive technique could only be muted and secondary.

Extreme gun violence, stuff blowing up, rebar impalings--I'm not against them in principle. A redubbed version of the 1996 Hong Kong release Hak hap, Black Mask clearly wants to justify its massacres with the John Woo defense: that operatic gunplay and gushing blood express the outsized psychological conflicts of the characters. To that end, writers Teddy Chan and Anna Hui give Jet Li's character Simon an origin in a battalion of biologically enhanced supersoldiers, the 701s. Simon escapes and reinvents himself as a mild-mannered librarian, but when he finds that his old bunkmates are involved in a plot to murder Hong Kong drug dealers and triad members, he knows that the police can never defeat them alone. He takes on a secret identity with a cap and mask and goes after the 701s' cultic leader.

The conflict that's supposed to motivate all the bloodshed is Simon's inner struggle between protecting his cop friend Rock and his vow of pacifism. But unlike John Woo's films, in which the characters' split personalities bear the dramatic weight of classic archetypes like Jekyll and Hyde, Black Mask barely touches on Simon's motivation before getting down to work on killing extras. It's nothing more than an alibi for the filmmakers, should they be accused of presenting violence without a story context. In fact, the tone of the film as a whole is light entertainment, fun action. All the more disturbing, then, that director Daniel Lee gives spurting exit wounds the fetishistic slow-motion treatment.

Somewhere behind the spray of ammunition is an enjoyable movie. Li is a handsome, charismatic actor, and his martial arts scenes are often revelatory. The steady beats of Bruce Lee and the fluid syncopation of Jackie Chan give way to a staccato flurry, punctuated by tense pauses in which Li sizes up his competitor. Director Daniel Lee utilizes the same non-sequitur, music-video style that Tsui Hark (who produced Black Mask) employed with such glorious confusion in last year's Knock Off. Here it pays off with computer-simulated camera "moves" and "edits" that allow us to make lightning connections between an action and its consequences. Even the obligatory ditzy love interest--one of Simon's library coworkers--is memorably cute and sharp-witted. At one point, noting that his costume looks like the one Cato wore in The Green Hornet, she accuses Simon of perpetuating an Asian stereotype.

But I can't relax and enjoy what's good about Black Mask because so many anonymous flunkies get skragged in such intimate detail. The tragic events of Littleton, Colo., have sensitized most of us to gratuitous violence, especially when it involves high-powered guns that make mass murder effortless. But with the blithe assurance that no one could mistake this light entertainment for reality, moviemakers can release action films like Black Mask without hearing a whimper of protest. Populist critics fall in line lest they be accused of not understanding the difference between fantasy and reality. Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post, in a positive review, describes the plot as "Handsome guy fights hundreds of punk-looking gangsters and commandos...utilizing kung fu moves unseen on earth and all the cool automatic weapons ever conceived."

Am I the only person who would make a distinction between the appeal of "kung fu moves unseen on earth" and "cool automatic weapons"? And to be honest, I don't always make that distinction; with The Matrix, I chose to ignore the movie's idolization of guns because I loved its premise, payoff, and style. Maybe all of us film lovers who are disturbed by Littleton should rethink our positions. Maybe we should stop defending what's indefensible.