Ocean Rescue

深海危机

China, 2023, colour, 2.35:1, 92 mins.

Director: Shen Dong 沈东.

Rating: 4/10.

Routine, poorly plotted action movie, with Mainland operatives taking on terrorists with a nuclear bomb.

STORY

China, the present day. Mike Steele (Aleksandr Tereshchenkov), an Irish nuclear-weapons specialist, is murdered at the United Nations in New York by terrorists and his briefcase stolen. Soon afterwards, in Chinese territorial waters, a suspicious old cargo ship that could be linked to terrorists is spotted, and Interpol asks the Chinese navy to investigate. Also, a few days earlier, an international terrorist suspected of being involved in the Mike Steele murder had showed up in a Chinese border city. Lin Zhan (Yan Yikuan), vice-head of the navy’s Special Forces Group, is assigned by the navy’s Chief of Staff (Li Youbin) to meet a government agent at a hotel in the area. The agent turns out to be Xia Su (Qu Jingjing), Lin Zhan’s former fiancee who left him standing at the altar on their wedding day and then disappeared. Lin Zhan and Xia Su are suddenly involved in a shootout at the hotel with terrorists, including Serafima Egorovna, now known as Sihna Narinskaya (Stas Levi), who manages to escape on a motorbike and then a speedboat. Xia Su still refuses to explain to Lin Zhan why she ditched him on their wedding day. But she is then ordered by her boss, deputy head of national security Fang (You Yongzhi), to work alongside Li Zhan and Navy Special Forces 3rd Company Commander Wang Haiquan (Wu Haochen). For the mission she’s assigned a technical specialist, her friend Li Qianyu (Ai Xiaoqi), who happens to fancy the geeky Wang Haiquan. The quartet takes a small boat to investigate a craft that may be linked to the suspicious cargo ship. Pretending they’ve run out of fuel, Li Zhan & Co. are invited on board for tea; but afterwards the head boatman (Hu Jianwen) sends two craft to kill them. Wang Haiquan and Li Qianyu get to safety but Li Zhan and Xia Su are washed ashore on a desert island, where they’re pursued by terrorists but rescued at the last moment by the Chinese navy. Back at the hotel, Li Zhan and Xia Su patch up their differences. Chinese intelligence learns that the terrorists want to retrieve a nuclear bomb that was on a foreign submarine that sank on 5 Nov 1986 in Area 9, in international waters. Xia Su asks Fang to be allowed to take over the mission. She swims out alone to the cargo ship but is captured. She recognises the terrorist leader, now calling himself James Vincent, as Juan Fernandez (Isaac Fernandez), with whom she was once in a counter-terrorism training camp. Vincent has now gone rogue “for world peace”. Xia Su sends back pictures via a tiny camera on a ring she wears. Vincent orders Sihna Narinskaya, his girlfriend, to bind Xia Su and throw her into the sea. Xia Su is rescued from drowning by Lin Zhan, who had set out alone to find her. Both secretly climb back on board and hear from kidnapped rocket engineer William Connor (Van De Grac) that Vincent plans a missile attack with the nuclear bomb in a few hours’ time.

REVIEW

A modestly budgeted action movie, with Chinese navy and intelligence operatives battling international terrorists who’ve dredged a nuclear bomb up from the depths, Ocean Rescue 深海危机 is a routine flag-waver that seems to be over at the hour mark and then reinvents the plot for a further half-hour. The film shows signs of some drastic editing, judging by its chaotic narrative, and the fights, and action sequences in general, are much too tightly cut, reducing both their impact and clarity. Reminiscent of 1990s Hong Kong action movies, with battling babes and hard-jawed heroes, this one racked up a puny RMB20 million on Mainland release in the spring.

Amazingly, the creative producer is billed as veteran producer-director Huang Jianxin 黄建新, though there are no traces of his usual quality control, at least in the final release version. The director is Shen Dong 沈东, who cut his teeth directing war movies for August First Studio (Death and Glory in Changde 喋血孤城, 2010) as well as a variety of other movies, including the good-looking paean to China’s manned space programme, The Space Dream 飞天 (2011), and the rather more routine melodrama Six Years, Six Days 6年6天 (2017). Ocean Rescue – shot back in 2018 in Guangdong province, southern China, with a mixed Greater China crew including noted action d.p. Chen Guanghong 陈广鸿 [Joe Chan] – is in the latter camp, with a script by Mainland army officer/writer-director Duan Lianmin 段连民 that’s completely by the numbers.

Largely a TV actor, Yan Yikuan 严屹宽 is as wooden here as his famous forensic pathologist in Whisper of Silent Body 秦明•生死语者 (2019), while fellow TV actor Wu Haochen 吴昊宸 is rather constricted by his geeky role that’s never allowed to bloom. Most of the characterful playing comes from the distaff side of the cast, with Qu Jingjing 屈菁菁 in a bigger role than usual as a feisty intelligence operative who has a past history with Yan’s character and Ai Xiaoqi 艾晓琪 as a lighthearted techie who fancies Wu’s naval officer. Qu handles herself well in the action stuff, and there’s even a generic face-off with a western villainess (played by Russian ballroom dancer-turned-martial artist Stas Levi), though the fight staging (by Hong Kong’s Huang Mingsheng 黄明升) is just okay. Western roles are one-dimensional as usual. The Chinese title means “Deep Sea Crisis”, though very little of the film takes place under water.

CREDITS

Presented by Beijing Loepo Pictures (CN).

Script: Duan Lianmin. Photography: Chen Guanghong [Joe Chan]. Editing: Sun Defu. Editing advice: Dai Zong. Music: A Kun. Art direction: Quan Rongzhe, Zhang Hua. Styling: Yu Xiaoxi. Sound: An Shaofeng, Wu Lei. Action: Huang Mingshen, Jiang Shan. Executive direction: Cui Zhe.

Cast: Li Youbin (Navy’s Chief of Staff), You Yongzhi (Fang, deputy head of national security), Yan Yikuan (Lin Zhan), Qu Jingjing (Xia Su), Wu Haochen (Wang Haiquan, Navy Special Forces 3rd Company commander), Ai Xiaoqi (Li Qianyu), Isaac Fernandez (Juan Fernandez/James Vincent, terrorist leader), Stas Levi (Sihna Narinskaya/Serafima Egorovna, terrorist), Van De Grac (William Connor, rocket engineer), Hu Jianwen (head boatman), Li Zonglin (Chinese navy technician), Jiang Shan (Chinese navy pilot), Aleksandr Tereshchenkov (Mike Steele, Irish nuclear weapons specialist).

Release: China, 15 Apr 2023.