Operation Red Sea

So if You want an non stop action with little story this movie is for You. Premise is simple special ops from China doing evacuation of their embassy in war torn country. Of course it's just the beginning of troubles for chinese commando unit. And movie is packed with shootouts, car chaces, tank battles, sniper duels and so on. Practicaly all the quite scenes between fighting are trimmed to bare minimum. And the action looks good, a lot of money went into special effects. There is a bit of propaganda in the movie fortunately on the level of American war movies. Be warned operation Red Sea is not for children some scenes are gory and too realistic. But if You are above 18 and want some good action movie give it a try.

Who'd have thought that the first live-action SPEC OPS action movie with realistic effects work would be made by China (starring their Navy SPEC OPS "Sea Dragons")? I guess I was wrong to think that without a rating-system, Chinese movies wouldn't dare to show anything -- it turns out that they have no qualms about showing everything (without lingering over it like Hollywood gore porn, of course) if the movie/genre was right...

Featuring 5 main escalating missions/set-pieces -- which are always strongly grounded by detailed sniper tactics and expertly strung together with clear plot-points as well as characterizations -- all the usual Hollywood war/military movie "fat" (such as "character arcs", "grand narratives", "social justice" polemics, etc) has been trimmed off, so that military enthusiasts can simply immerse themselves in the gritty and heart-pounding SPEC OPS action.

Just for its utter lack of pretension (to appear more "balanced", "diverse", profound", etc.) -- 10/10, would BANG again!

I finished the movie yesterday, still fell unreal. It's like a civilian first time experiencing real war, not the kind of wars that were shown in the Hollywood war movies, but an extremely realistic one, the one that you will experience when you walk right into the middle of an ongoing armed conflict . I have watched countless war movies from all over the world but I have never felt the way like I had on yesterday. I heard from my Chinese friends about modern Chinese young netizens love to see China gets into a war with other countries to demonstrate the ability of their Military force. I strongly advice them to see this movie, to see what will really happen in a war.

Dante Lam .. I think it has been too long since I saw a movie of his. And watching this, I have to say, if he can do one thing right, it is the action sequences. No prisoners taken and all that. A lot of (CGI) blood and a lot of death. The stunt work here is amazing to say the least! The sound effects, the tension, the adrenalin ... everything is working just fine here.

There may be a little patriotism, but other than that ... also like with Wolf Warrior, it's not like we are not used to that from US/Hollywood output. So it is more or less the same, just in chinese. But the action actually is one might say better choreographed than the American counterpart ... or at least as good.

This movie was actually better than I expected. Though not perfect, it provided a decent storyline and lots of action. It's definitely worth seeing at least once.

I see some of the more critical reviewers saying how it is just Chinese propaganda. I would argue it's not much different than most of our American movies that display sacrifice and heroism (such as films like Act of Valor).

Besides, the trivia section of this movie even states that this film was "a gift for the 90th Anniversary of the Founding of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, as well as the Communist Party's 19th National Congress." So what do you expect? And quite frankly, who cares if it's propaganda-like for the Chinese citizens?

Give this movie a shot. It is enjoyable and definitely worth seeing. you may be surprised how well the story moves along with multiple battle sequences. I also appreciated seeing another country's attempt at an action/military movie.