Review of Operation Red Sea (2018) by Hi Q — 05 Mar 2018

This movie celebrates the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese people's army and throughout the movie we're being reminded of the fact by the display of excessive jingoism. Nonstop 3 hour shooting action with endless missions that could have been packed into an hour and half of decent film making.

The director should have bothered to develop some characters and more importantly do the proper movie editing. Instead we're just being served action scene after action scene which gets old pretty quick.

The plot is based first on incidents off Somali coast and later in the made up country of Yewaire which I presume is an attempt to show that the Chinese forces can operate everywhere. And so the director decided to mix fairy tales with half reality in order to cover all his bases and reach the widest audience possible.

What comes out is therefore a mishmash that doesn't know where it starts nor where it ends or where it's supposed to be heading. The ending scene with Chinese battleships cruising South China Sea that China claims as its own appeals to the feelings of domestic Chinese audience and serves no doubt as a subtle warning to their perceived American enemies and to the delight of the Chinese Government that sanctioned this movie.

Two stars for an effort to create a nice shooting three hour long half video/half propaganda game....