Operation Red Sea

红海行动

Hong Kong/China, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 3-D (China only), 138 mins.

Director: Lin Chaoxian 林超贤 [Dante Lam].

Rating: 6/10.

The relentless ordnance triumphs over the characters in an evacuation blockbuster that tries to outdo Wolf Warrior II.

STORY

Gulf of Aden, the present day. The Chinese container ship Guangdong is hijacked by pirates in international waters; a Chinese naval vessel containing the elite Jiaolong Assault Team 蛟龙突击队 shoots two pirates dead and rescues the crew but a third pirate escapes into Somali territorial waters. Jiaolong sniper Luo Xing (Wang Yanlin) is seriously wounded in the chase and ends up in hospital in Djibouti. A week later, in Casablanca, Morocco, fearless Chinese French reporter Xia Nan (Hai Qing) is almost blown up by a car bomb as she decides, against the wishes of her boss (Ren Dahua), to investigate William Bison, a scientist/businessman who is involved in providing yellowcake, used in dirty bombs, to Islamic terrorists in the Arabian Peninsula country of Yewaire. Meanwhile, in the Arabian Peninsula, a Chinese warship captained by Gao Yun (Zhang Hanyu) is ordered to evacuate 130 Chinese citizens, plus 30 foreign employees of Chinese companies, following the outbreak of civil war in Yewaire between the government, rebels and Islamic terrorist group Zaka. When the rebels complicate the evacuation process, the eight-strong Jiaolong team – with new recruit Gu Shun (Huang Jingyu) taking the place of Luo Xing – is sent in to assist in evacuating Chinese embassy staff. In the chaos one Chinese citizen who works for William Bison – Deng Mei (Huang Fenfen) – has been separated from her family and, along with William Bison and Xia Nan (who is already in Yewaire investigating him), is in rebel hands. When their van is ambushed by Zaka, and Deng Mei and William Bison are taken by the terrorist group, Xia Nan escapes and manages to call the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s international helpline for imperilled citizens. The Jiaolong unit is sent to rescue Deng Mei, who is being used a hostage to force the Chinese navy to release Yewaire’s president. When Xia Nan hooks up with Jiaolong leader Yang Rui (Zhang Yi), she tries to tell him about the greater danger of William Bison and Zaka manufacturing a chemical weapon, but he is only concerned with finding and rescuing Deng Mei. After the Jiaolong unit and Xia Nan are ambushed in the desert, they find themselves behind terrorist lines and unable to get back to the harbour; their only option is to press on to the heavily-armed village where Zaka is holding Deng Mei.

REVIEW

The main surprise about Operation Red Sea 红海行动 is how relatively good it is compared with Operation Mekong 湄公河行动 (2016), the last action extravaganza by Hong Kong director Lin Chaoxian 林超贤 [Dante Lam] that also used Mainland money and a real event for inspiration. Centred this time on an elite, SAS-style unit, the Jiaolong Assault Team 蛟龙突击队, which is sent in to rescue a Chinese hostage in a fictional, civil war-torn country somewhere in the Arabian Peninsula, it’s much more in the line of other PLA action epics like Sky Hunter 空天猎 (2017), which concentrated on the ordnance and hardware, than an action-thriller like Mekong which attempted (but failed) to supply some character interplay between the setpieces. Red Sea hardly bothers with any characterisation – and for a lot of the time the main players are indistinguishable beneath helmets and scarves, anyway – and simply goes for an action-adrenalin pump that starts to repay dividends in the darker second half. Despite a pasted-together script and a relatively low-wattage cast, the film has trounced most other CNY contenders to become the Mainland’s second biggest hit ever, with some RMB3.6 billion in seven weeks, narrowly ahead of Detective Chinatown 2 唐人街探案2. [Final tallies for the two films were RMB3.65 billion and RMB3.40 billion.]

That’s still some way behind the RMB5.7 billion hawled in by all-time Mainland box-office champ Wolf Warrior II 战狼II (2017), which was also inspired by the Chinese navy’s real-life evacuation of Chinese citizens from Aden, Yemen, in Mar 2015. With a similar starting point in a fictional country, Red Sea also bolts on a pulpy action movie with an explicit message about the lengths to which China’s government will go to rescue any of its citizens anywhere in the world. (Going one better than WWII, it even lists the Foreign Ministry’s international helpline at the end.) The difference between the two movies is that WWII had a lean, pulpy appeal plus characters whom viewers could engage with, whereas Red Sea is an overblown, coldly efficient machine that simply wears its audience down into submission. WWII was already in the can before Red Sea began shooting in Feb 2017 and Red Sea, with a more than double reported budget (RMB500 million vs. WWII‘s RMB200 million), seems intent on outdoing the earlier film in every way.

Unfortunately that didn’t include the quality of the screenplay, which took Lin and three other writers – including Feng Ji 冯骥, from the PLA’s naval studio and Hong Kong’s Lin Mingjie 林明杰 (Seoul Raiders 韩城攻略, 2005; Mekong) – to come up with a back-of-a-coaster plot that has almost no dramatic coherence and even less psychological or emotional depth. After a 12-minute opening sequence designed to show off Jiaolong’s abilities – rescuing a boat from pirates off the East African coast, a pumped-up version of the much leaner, one-man opening to WWII – the main story for some reason starts over in Morocco by introducing a fearless French Chinese investigative reporter (Mainland TV actress Hai Qing 海清, 40, all bolshie attitude and unintelligible English/French) on the trail of a dirty chemical-bomb maker. After throwing in a cameo by Hong Kong veteran Ren Dahua 任达华 [Simon Yam] as her boss, the film then zooms back east again for the evacuation plot, set in the fictional country of Yewaire in the Arabian Peninsula. (The only reason for the Morocco episode seems to be because most of the film was actually shot there.)

Little time is spent on the actual evacuation, which soon goes wrong when rebels take over the streets, necessitating Jiaolong to go in and rescue a Chinese citizen who’s been whisked away and held hostage in the chaos. Meanwhile, the fearless investigative reporter has arrived in Yewaire with her faithful Arab assistant Abu and, after a string of unlikely coincidences, ends up in the desert with the Jiaolong team. There she makes a royal pain in the arse of herself by refusing to take orders from Jiaolong’s leader (top-billed Zhang Yi 张译) even after the squad has been half blown to bits. More often in supporting roles, the goofy-faced Zhang, 40 – the sleazy nightclub owner in Cock and Bull 追凶者也 (2016), the detective in Blood of Youth 少年 (2016) – has a certain authority as the squad’s leader while also fitting into the ensemble, though there are times, such as in his set-do with the quarrelsome reporter, when he looks more ready to crack a joke than bark an order.

The rest of the Jiaolong team hardly register as individuals, and the script only makes cursory attempts to give them dramatic arcs of their own, such as some alpha-male stuff between a newbie sniper and his spotter, played by Huang Jingyu 黄景瑜 and Yin Fang 尹昉. In her butchest role to date as the only woman in the team, Mainland martial-arts tomboy Jiang Luxia 蒋璐霞, 31, mostly clenches her jaw and unleashes artillery; the writers don’t really know what to do with her and her martial-arts skills aren’t showcased at all. Veteran Zhang Hanyu 张涵予 (who led the main taskforce in Mekong) pops up here and there, stony-faced, as the naval evacuation commander.

It’s on a sheer ordnance level that Red Sea stakes its success, and the early action sequences in Yewaire – grubbily shot in jittery, grey, cold newsreel style by Mekong‘s Feng Yuanwen 冯远文 [Edmond Fung], plus Huang Yongheng 黄永恒 [Horace Wong] (Kung Fu Jungle 一个人的武林, 2014) – are very effective as chaos ensues in the capital’s streets, largely because of Lin’s lack of interest in any action geography. Soon afterwards, however, the film’s unrelenting, all-over-the-place firepower – broken by routine bits of dialogue – starts to become exhausting; it’s actually the quieter, tenser moments of sniper drama that are more effective.

In the second half, as the violence gets darker and even more relentless, the “war is hell” message does finally batter its way into the viewer’s consciousness. It’s not backed up by much dialogue but there’s at least a sense, as in Lin’s better films, of characters starting to reveal themselves under pressure. Lin’s films have generally pivoted on some kind of male rivalry; one of the problems of Red Sea is that, as an ensemble movie, it tries to be different and fails – though at least the audience is spared the embarrassing scenes between actors Peng Yuyan 彭于晏 [Eddie Peng] and Zhang in Mekong that tried to convince the audience they were bonding.

Other technical credits are equally mechanical, with a wall-of-sound score by Hong Kong debutant Liang Haoyi 梁皓一 that pumps along behind all the sound effects, and editing that goes for maximum kinetic impact. In general the big action setpieces – a city shootout, desert ambush, 30-minute marketplace battle, desert tank battle, and the finale between Jialolong’s survivors and the Islamic villain – are staged with no regard for visual geography or physical continuity, only visceral impact, and with Arabs just cannon fodder. As well as director and script credits, Lin also takes – as in the similarly bang-bang-boom-boomy The Viral Factor 逆战 (2012) – an overall action director credit.

CREDITS

Presented by Bona Film Group (CN), The PLA Navy Government TV Art Centre of China (CN), Star Dream Studio Media (CN), Emperor Film Production (HK). Produced by Film Firewokrs (HK).

Script: Lin Chaoxian [Dante Lam], Feng Ji, Chen Zhuzhu, Lin Mingjie. Photography: Feng Yuanwen [Edmond Fung], Huang Yongheng [Horace Wong]. Editing: Cai Zhixiong, Lin Zhiheng. Music: Liang Haoyi. Title song: Cui Bo. Production design: Zhuang Guorong. Art direction: Jiang Hanlin [Jeffrey Kong]. Costume design: Huang Wenying, Tong Yao. Sound: He Zhitang. Action direction: Lin Chaoxian [Dante Lam]. Action: Huang Weiliang [Jack Wong], Xu Tianfa. Military advice: Wang Haifeng.

Cast: Zhang Yi (Yang Rui, Jiaolong leader), Huang Jingyu (Gu Shun, sniper), Hai Qing (Xia Nan), Du Jiang (Xu Hong, deputy leader, demolitions), Zhang Hanyu (Gao Yun, ship’s captain), Jiang Luxia (Tong Li, machine-gunner), Wang Yutian (Zhang Tiande/Shitou/Rocky, machine-gunner), Yin Fang (Li Dong, spotter), Mai Hengli (Zhuang Yu, signaller), Guo Jiahao (Lu Chen, medic), Ren Dahua [Simon Yam] (Albert, Xia Nan’s boss), Wang Yanlin (Luo Xing, sniper), Wang Qiang (political commissar), Huo Siyan, Cai Jie (drone drivers), Huang Fenfen (Deng Mei), Yu Dawei (He Qingliu, Chinese consul), Faical Elkihel (Abu, Xia Nan’s assistant), Sanaa Alaoui (Ina).

Release: Hong Kong, 1 Mar 2018; China, 16 Feb 2018.