Film Review: ‘Operation Red Sea’
Explosions overwhelm character in Dante Lam's propaganda pic, in which an elite Chinese naval team battles terrorists in Africa.
By Maggie Lee
Chief Asia Film Critic
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To save one single Chinese national held hostage in a war-torn African country, China’s navy sends an elite squad on an anti-terrorist mission the features so many explosions it’s like Operation Desert Storm squeezed into one day. Despite the premise’s similarity to “Wolf Warrior 2,” (China’s top-grossing film), Hong Kong action-director Dante Lam ’s “ Operation Red Sea ” is war propaganda that comes off as antiwar, a patriotic film so carried away by its own visceral, pulverizing violence that patriotism almost becomes an afterthought. Military geeks and genre fans in overseas markets will be awestruck by the mind-blowing action, but domestic audiences expressed disappointment at the film’s downplaying of individual heroism and feel-good nationalism. Nevertheless, the movie has still placed second in box office among Chinese New Year blockbusters and doubled profits over Lam’s previous film “Operation Mekong.”
The closest Hollywood precedents of Lam’s biggest production to date are Michael Bay’s “13 Hours” and Ridley Scott’s “Black Hawk Down.” Not only are they films on terrorism shot in Morocco, all work hard to plunge viewers into a nerve-shattering, immersive experience. Lam’s production is just as overblown, with an ostentatious display of weaponry bordering on geekiness, and a graphic depiction of human casualties (such as stumps of limbless torsos) that manages to be as numbing as it is stomach-churning.
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Since Lam stopped telling Hong Kong stories and targeted the huge mainland market, his ambitions have swelled with the astronomical budgets he can muster. Here, enjoying support from China’s navy, he devises the bloodiest and most propulsive battle scenes ever allowed on mainland screens (in Hong Kong the film is classified for over-18 audiences).
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Sadly, his direction has become a lot more mechanical, and his characters have no emotional contours. Unlike Lin’s stylish police noirs “Beaststalker,” “The Stool Pigeon” or “That Demon Within,” neither the story nor characters have any moral ambiguity or psychological shadings. The physically capable cast, boasting illustrious backgrounds in military, martial arts or dance, all look indistinguishably rugged, but feeble attempts to give them touching moments, such as a soldier feeding candy to a jawless comrade, instead can play like an unintentional gag.
The screenplay by Lam, Feng Ji, Chen Zhuzhu and Eric Lin is so choppy and inchoate that goals, strategies and execution are one big blur, and protagonists appear to rush headlong into combat as aimlessly as flying shrapnel. Slam-bang cross-cutting by Choi Chi-chung and Lam Chi-hang convey lots of speed and action, yet the film feels interminable, stuck in an unvaried state of extremity and stress.
Jiaolong (Sea Dragon) is a special task force in the Chinese navy, first seen defending a cargo ship from pirates near Somalian waters. Then the captain receives orders to change course and help evacuate Chinese nationals from fictional North African country Yewaire, where civil war has broken out.
The evacuation goes smoothly, with Chinese kids walking in neat procession waving little red flags as they board the ship, as if they’ve just come from a national day parade rather than having just escaped a military coup. Howevcr, compared with “Wolf Warrior 2,” in which the Chinese flag draws instant jubilation and adulation from Africans, this is a false calm before the storm. Indeed, Deng Mei, a Chinese embassy staffer, has been captured by the rebels together with local officials. The captain (Zhang Hanyu in a stiff cameo) sends all eight members of the Jiaolong to retrieve her at all costs.
This is a cue to let slip the dogs of war, starting with savage firefights that move from wrecked buildings onto chaotic streets, the volley of ammo so stunningly diverse, powerful and indiscrimate that it’s impossible to take stock of human outcome. On a dusty road, a van in which Deng is riding is ambushed by the terrorsit group Zaka. Any attempt by the audience to make sense of the situation is blown to smithereens by explosion after deafening explosion. Korean action films used to lead the pack in Asia for pyrotechnics, and even though the special effects in this film are largely handled by Korean studios, the territorial crown must be surrendered to Chinese megabusters for the amount of money they can burn. There’s a perverse wonder at the massive bomb clouds rising into mid-air before bursting, like fireworks, into a golden shimmer.
Jiaolong’s leader (Zhang Yi) picks up survivor Xia Nan (Christine Hai Qing, overdoing the hard-assed reporter schtick), a French-Chinese journalist on the trail of Yellowcake, a formula for chemical weapons. When they penetrate Zaka’s stronghold in a secluded village, it’s eight Chinese against 150 armed-to-the-teeth terrorists.
Unlike the Rambo-like kickass exploits in “Wolf Warrior 2,” this mission is filmed as collective action, each soldier desperately trying to make it through the nonstop battle. Their assignment evokes pathos rather than glory in a blood-soaked defense that finds the Chinese platoon cornered at a dead end in a town square. The fighting is orchestrated from a dazzling array of angles, and vicious types of assault. Upstaging a later bombastic battle of tanks in the desert, the town square scene potently harks back to Lam’s earlier, better films in which protagonists, whether cop or criminal, are trapped like animals, attaining tragic stature through a primal will to survive. Here, the take-no-prisoners approach on both sides is harrowing. The cameras linger on every finger blown off, every squirt of blood when a bullet hits the jugular, every leg lopped off, every facial disfiguration that stirs discomfort.
Covering Morocco’s imposing mountainous and desert terrain, Lam, who doubles as action director, makes use of the high altitude vantage points to stage some terrific sniping sequences. Music by Elliot Leung is surprisingly subdued and subtly elegiac by mainland blockbuster standards. Instead of using an orchestral score for major setpiece, the movie often holds back to let the fantastic, roaring sound mix do the work. As in all of Lam’s works, overall tech credits are of a very high level.
Reviewed at UA KK Mall, Shenzhen, China. Feb. 21, 2018. Running time: 130 MIN. Original Title: “Hong Hai Xing Dong.”
- Production: (China) A Horgos Bona Media Co., Huaxia Film Distribution Co. release of a Beijing Bona Film Group Co., the PLA Navy Government TV Art Central of China, Star Dream Studio Media Co., Emperor Film Prod. presentation of a Film Fireworks production. (International sales: Emperor Motion Pictures, Hong Kong). Producer: Candy Leung. Executive producers: Albert Yeung, Yu Dong, Lu Zhenhua, Tang Jing.
- Crew: Director: Dante Lam. Screenplay: Lam, Feng Ji, Chen Zhuzhu, Eric Lin. Camera (widescreen, color): Fung Yuen-man, Horace Wong Wing-hang. Editors: Choi Chi-hung, Lam Chi-hang. Music: Elliot Leung
- With: Zhang Yi, Johnny Huang Jingyu, Christina Hai Qing, Du Jiang, Jiang Luxia, Yin Fang, Wang Yutian, Zhang Hanyu, Simon Yam. (Mandarin, English, Arabic dialogue)
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‘operation red sea’ (‘honghai xingdong’): film review.
Dante Lam’s Chinese action blockbuster 'Operation Red Sea' has been selected to represent Hong Kong in the Oscar race.
By Elizabeth Kerr
Elizabeth Kerr
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The homegrown military drama Operation Red Sea will compete in the fest’s main competition.
Hong Kong director Dante Lam’s quest to transform into Asia’s Michael Bay takes another step toward completion with Operation Red Sea , a blustery, noisy, polished, jingoistic hot mess based on the real life PLA evacuation of 500 Chinese nationals from Yemen in 2015. The latest in a string of box office winners celebrating the might of the Chinese military (this was, not surprisingly, produced with support from the PLA Navy Government TV Art Central of China) has more in common with the genuinely solid actioner Wolf Warrior 2 than the inept Top Gun rip-off Sky Hunter , but without Warrior ’s sense of goofy fun.
Grossing nearly $580 million — $577 million of that in China — in its spring holiday run, Operation Red Sea has preposterously and infuriatingly been selected as Hong Kong’s (!) Oscar submission for 2018. Let’s just let that sink in for a moment. Red Sea says nothing about or for the SAR, and the choice has been widely slammed as a transparent attempt to curry favor somewhere in Beijing.
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Following the success of 2016’s similarly themed and “patriotic” Operation Mekong (in that case about the war on drugs), Lam heads to the fictional Middle Eastern state of Yewaire to evacuate 130 Chinese nationals and expatriate staff at Chinese companies after a coup. But first we’re introduced to the navy’s elite Jiaolong Unit 1, a special corps so badass it makes the SAS and the Mossad look like children playing G.I. Joe in the schoolyard. Captain Yang Rui (Zhang Yi, I Am Not Madame Bovary ) leads the team, which includes big shot sniper Shun Gu (Huang Jingyu), spotter Li Dong (Yin Fang), demolitions expert Xu Hong (Du Jiang) and female gunner (her official title) Tong Li (Jiang Luxia).
After dispatching a bunch of Somali pirates (snarling black people with eye patches) threatening a Chinese merchant ship, Jiaolong and the Linyi, captained by Gao Yun (Zhang Hanyu, The Great Wall ), head to Yewaire, where they graciously expand their mission to include rescuing non-Chinese hostages, mostly at the urging of Chinese-French journalist Nan Xia (Hai Qing). She’s in Yewaire investigating an energy company CEO moonlighting as an arms dealer sourcing yellowcake (uranium powder) for dirty bombs. He’s also under investigation for abuse of a six-year-old in case illegal arms dealing weren’t bad enough. Explosions, gunfire and many severed limbs ensue.
Operation Red Sea isn’t guilty of being poorly made: in fact it’s one of the strongest big budget action extravaganzas to come from the PRC this year. It’s helped along by Lam, who proved himself an adept action maestro with the likes of thoughtful, moody Hong Kong thrillers Beast Cops and Beast Stalker . But the siren call of bigger, louder and simply more toys has lured Lam, like so many others, to China. The difference, of course, is the prescribed message that makes Hollywood films at their most fevered look restrained. In one segment, when the hostages see the navy in the harbor, one leaps to her feet and yells, “That’s our warship!” to rousing cheers. The film ends with a proverbial “Get off my lawn” in a convoy of navy destroyers warning an interloper in Chinese territorial waters to “Please turn around immediately.”
Ironically, Lam may have killed any recruiting drives, as the action — choreographed by Lam and Jeffrey Kong and terrific when it finally kicks into high gear — is grisly: a soldier fights with half his face blown off, one attaches a tourniquet to staunch bleeding from his graphically missing arm, heads are left on the ground several meters from their bodies, it’s gruesome stuff. Lam doesn’t make war look glorious. It looks disgusting and wasteful, if only on the Chinese side. The Yewairian (?) rebels and terrorists are equally faceless; no motivations are ever given beyond boilerplate blather about “A better country,” for someone.
Operation Red Sea ’s biggest flaw (propagandizing aside) is an endless, exhausting narrative that just keeps going and going. Nonetheless Lam and his (largely) Hong Kong crew turn in some stellar work: editors Choi Chi-hung and Lam Chi-hang make ludicrous set pieces click, chiefly the desert escape in tanks (that handle like Tercels) and the village siege stand out; and cinematographers Fung Yuen-man and Horace Wong do a stellar job marrying kinetics with white-knuckle tension. Will there be a third Operation ? Perhaps, given the stellar returns on both. That should give Hong Kong another chance at Oscar glory too.
Production company: Film Fireworks
US distributor: Well Go USA
Cast: Zhang Yi, Huang Jingyu, Hai Qing, Du Jiang, Jiang Luxia, Wang Yutian, Yin Fang, Henry Prince Mak, Gua Jiahao, Zhang Hanyu, Wang Yanling, Wang Qiang, Huo Siyan, Cai Jie
Director: Dante Lam
Screenwriter: Feng Ji, Chen Zhuzhu, Eric Lin
Producer: Candy Leung
Executive producer: Yu Dong, Lu Zhenhua, Tang Jing, Albert Yeung
Director of photography: Fung Yuen-man, Horace Wong
Production designer: Joel Chong Kwok-wing
Costume designer: Hwarng Wern Ying, Miriam Chan
Editor: Choi Chi-hung, Lam Chi-hang
Music: Elliot Leung
Casting: Noureddine Aberdine, Yan Ruipeng, Li Xiaodong
World sales: Emperor Motion Pictures
In Putonghua, Arabic and English
No rating, 140 minutes
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