Blood Red Sea

When it comes to war movies, I can be a discriminating critic.  In fact, I haven’t seen a truly memorable one since ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and maybe ‘Black Hawk Down.’  But what about ‘Dunkirk,’ you ask?  While ‘Dunkirk’ wasn’t bad, I found its uneven pace and non-linear story structure disorienting.  And while the recent spate of post-9/11 contemporary “War on Terror” films such as ‘Lone Survivor,’ ‘American Sniper,’ ’13 Hours’ and ’12 Strong’ were competently made for the most part and had their moments, they can also be quite a bore.

 

So I wasn’t exactly expecting very much when I decided to see ‘Operation Red Sea’ on a whim.  As the Dragon rises in the east and China becomes a regional military power, a steady stream of war movies has been enjoying great success at the Chinese box office, such as ‘Wolf Warrior 2’ (think “Chinese Rambo”) and ‘Sky Hunter’ (think “Chinese Top Gun”).  ‘Operation Red Sea,’ loosely (by which I mean very loosely) based on the evacuation of Chinese and other foreigners from Yemen back in 2015, is perhaps best characterized as a “Chinese Navy SEAL’s” movie akin to Chuck Norris’s ‘The Delta Force’ and ‘Missing in Action’ film franchises from back in the ‘80’s.

 

Directed by Hong Kong "Gun-Fu" veteran and John Woo protégé Dante Lam (‘Operation Mekong’), ORS is a robust, adrenalized and realistic war movie that holds no punches and takes no prisoners.  Over the course of its bladder-stretching two hours and nineteen minutes running time, the film is jam-packed with fast and furious firefights and explosions galore that would make even ‘Black Hawk Down’ blush.  But it's much more than just another mindless bloodbath of a movie with a high body count; ORS gives us a brutal,  uncompromising, and often thrilling look at modern squad-level combat that doesn’t shy away from the gory details. 

Grade: A