Like
the Wolf Warrior franchise, Hong Kong
action auteur Dante Lam’s latest Mainland production was largely funded by the
PLA and supported with extensive in-kind donations of military hardware. At
least in this case, we get their money’s worth. Apparently, the military
granted Lam’s every over-the-top request and the results are all up there on
the screen when Operation Red Sea (trailer here) opens today in
New York.
Basically,
Red Sea is a loose thematic sequel to
Lam’s blockbuster, Operation Mekong.
This time around, the military takes center stage and the ripped-from-the-headlines
story is based on 2015 evacuation of Chinese nationals from Yemen.
Refreshingly, there are no western bad guys. Instead, they are Middle Eastern
terrorists and Somali pirates (in the prologue). Sure, there is flag-waving,
but it is not nearly as distracting as in the Wolf Warrior films.
Given
the evacuation plot, Red Sea bears
some resemblance to Wolf Warrior 2,
but the action scenes, also choreographed by Lam, far exceed anything in Wu
Jing’s hit duology. To a large extent, the film is one long action sequence, as
one rescue mission begets another and eventually morphs into an operation to
recover stolen yellowcake from a mad mullah. If you think that sounds like a
criticism, you are sorely mistaken. Lam pulls out all the stops, giving us
infiltrations, drone warfare, house-to-house combat, sniper duels, tank
battles, helicopter attacks, and hand-to-hand combat during the mother of all
dust storms.
Arguably,
it is halfway realistic too, since a number of Jiaolong commandos are killed in
the line of duty. Frankly, Lam does not spend a lot of time on boring old character
development. Jiang Luxia’s Tong Li probably stands out the most, simply because
she is a woman (who has no trouble hanging with her male colleagues).
Ironically, the most memorable performance comes from Hai Qing, as French-Chinese
reporter Xia Nan. Eventually, we learn became so driven to expose terrorists
because her husband and young son were murdered in the 7/7 London bombings,
which is a nice character development touch.