Wolf Warrior

A fervid display of Chinese nationalism & jingoistic propaganda, Wolf Warrior treads the same route that countless Hollywood action war blockbusters have walked, and packs some expertly choreographed moments of action as well. However, the story has no meat on it, its characters are dull, the CGI is lame, and the pacing is tedious throughout.

Co-written & directed by Wu Jing who also stars as the lead, the film establishes its tone rather well with its stylishly photographed opening segment, and also makes it abundantly clear who its intended audience are. But once it tries to build a narrative around its primary character, the shortcomings in the script are effortlessly exposed and turns this 90 mins story into a chore.

Not a single character is worth caring about which keeps us detached to everything that unfolds on screen. The action picks up in the second half but it is predictable & uninteresting. Wu brings a physicality to his role that helps keep things afloat but its nationalistic sentiments are overplayed. Scott Adkins plays the baddie and does his usual shtick. And that romance angle is an absolute cringe.

Overall, Wolf Warrior is a bland, boring & blatant propaganda piece that attempts to remind its citizens of their duty & responsibility to their nation but the execution is all over the place. There are a couple intense & captivating scenes of martial arts face-offs where it redeems itself to an extent yet for the most part, the picture remains an unexciting & unstimulating affair. A forgettable, lifeless & uninspiring actioner.

I personally enjoyed this movie a lot. It's rapid-paced, intense and quite entertaining. I've also read that some of the action sequences are actually coming from real Chinese special force members who invented them and put them in use in reality. It's also a milestone in Chinese movie genres. Chinese movie is famous for action genres but this one is the first hybrid of genres of action and military. And it's not tradition Chinese martial arts which is mainly for the purpose of performance and exercise, not practical combat. The actions in this movie are a reflection of, but a little glorified, modern military combat. However, I'd say the directing is the biggest weakness of the movie. It's understandable, because the main protagonist directed the movie himself. He admitted in an interview that he really didn't want to direct the movie because he was not a professional director. He was just an martial arts actor. But he spent a lot time and efforts trying to find some professional directors to direct this movie and investors to invest but in vain because no one thinks this genre would be popular. He had to do everything by himself and invest in the movie out of his own pocket. So the movie took 7 years to make. It turned out to be great success at the Chinese box office. If there were professional people helping him refine the plot as well as directing the movie from the beginning, this movie could've been a lot better. Given all these reasons, I gave it an 8 out of 10.

On a side note, by looking at some of the reviews here, I am amazed by how many people have ridiculous double standards. When it comes to a Chinese military movie, it is just Chinese propaganda so it's lame, untrustworthy and worthless. But when it is Black hawk down or American Sniper or any American patriot movies, it heroic, righteous and meaningful even if the movie is about a western country engaging in a war that causes many civilians to die on other nation's soil. In contrary, China, no matter how bad it is portrayed in western movies, it never incurs any war in other countries. Chinese army is built to protect its people from invaders, not to invade. It's funny that how many westerners are brainwashed by their biased media and "propaganda". The world is big and every story has two sides. People should get out of their home and take a look at the outside world. Only by this way can a person form a more objective, mature outlook of things, especially when it comes to political affairs. I believe I am entitled to say this because I myself has 10+ yrs living experiences in both China and USA and I know how media are manipulated and twisted in both countries. Now I don't fully trust either source solely. Rather, they complement each other pretty well to give you a quite clear picture about what is the truth about everything and how media only serve the interest of their own country, even though at the expense of sacrificing objectivity and authenticity.

Story isn't bad, has a few funny parts. The actors are likable, and the action isn't half bad. It's directing isn't on par with any American stuff, but it's not going to chase anyone away either. It has some hilarious Chinese propaganda sprinkled throughout, all and all it's ok.

Watching this so-called Chinese Special Force crap is like getting the root canal dental treatment without anesthetic procedure. It's very painful to watch a film spent so many manpower and money for nothing. I often thought why most of all the mega-budget movie productions out of Asia, including China, Hong Kong, India and other Asian countries always turned out so lame and so childish shallow and pathetic. I think mostly it's because their screenplays sucked big time, the dialog sucked, the casting sucked, and worst of all, the directing sucked.

Why after having borrowed so heavily from many foreign movies yet still turned out so lame?

1) Just like the stupid "Strike Back" TV series, a camera seemed to be always followed every movement of the characters from so many different angles for the control center to monitor so easily. It's just looked so unconvincingly stupid.

2) In order to tone down a fully macho testosterone crappy movie, the stupid production would so stupid put one totally unnecessary, highly impossible female character in it. So in "Blackhat", we got a totally useless and purposeless heroine to play a very absurd unnecessary role. This "Wolf Warriors" is even worse, they put a woman with bee-stung lips to play as the leader of the so-called toughest of all toughest Chinese military forces. Give me a break, will you?

3) When you in the hot pursuit of the unseen enemy in the jungle, why a) everybody still holding their assault rifles in front of their eyes? How this stupid gun holding gesture would speed up their chasing speed? b) they never spread out but grouped so tightly together, making them such an big easy target and never got a chance to react?

4) Why once all of the Chinese military films would inject so much unconvincing patriotic slogans?

5) Why the stupid production team would be so stupid enough to add computerized wolf pack attack the so-called 'Wolf Warriors"? Where's the brotherhood, man?

6) Why all the cameo uniforms looked so new?

7) It's very tiresome to watch what we have seen in this movie, like the realistic Chinese military forces, endless trainings, rehearsals, would-be imaginary fighting, small or large scale; or even computerized strategic rehearsals are always and the only stuff that Chinese military forces are doing everyday. It's so formulaic and so painful to watch again and again.

8) The soundtrack was over-the-top annoying and unnecessary most of the time.

This is another self-indulgent, self-righteous, self-pompous...a B movie styled film trying so hard to glorify the Chinese Communist 'Liberation' Army.

Leng Feng is a harden super-sniper in the Chinese Army. His unit takes down a drug operation. He disobeys orders to kill the gang-leader. He is reprimanded and is assigned to the special unit Wolf. Meanwhile somewhere southeast Asia, police tries to take down ruthless drug-lord Min Deng, the dead gang-leader's older brother. He coldly has his western mercenaries massacre the police and sends them to avenge his brother.

This is a Chinese military action thriller. It's a lot of action. Some of it is solid but it's rarely realism. They are literally fighting a pack of wolves at one point. Compared to Hollywood, the effects are slightly inferior. There is an impressive amount of real military hardware. It's better than most B-action movies but not quite at the theatrical level. Way too often, the soldiers are standing too close to each other. I guess it conveys something visually but it looks cheesy bad. Overall, I give the action a good passing grade.

The leading guy is hard which could be interpreted as stiff but that's the character. He takes some comedic turns which are quite jarring. The evil plot is questionable at best. It needs to be better written. It should be a simple revenge plot and not that hard to figure out. The good aspect is that the western mercenaries are formidable foes. There is also a cheesy battle over motivations. All of it adds up to a nice fight against tough villains. There is a fine B-movie here but a few stumbles keep it from being good.