Rating: D
Dir: Scott Waugh
Star: Jackie Chan, John Cena, Chunrui Ma, Pilou Asbæk
I’m generally in favor of the recent trend of action choreographers becoming directors. The likes of the John Wick franchise or Atomic Blonde show what that experience can bring to a movie. Counterpoint: this film. Waugh is an experienced stunt coordinator, who has worked in the field since the late eighties. But, Christ, the results here are awful. Not the stunts, to be clear. Just as a piece of film-making. Likely not helping matters, it seems to have been a troubled creation, originally intended for Sylvester Stallone. Shooting took place back in 2018, but partly due to COVID, it wasn’t released for close to five years, and the $80 million production went straight to Netflix.
It’s clear the aim was to follow in the footsteps of things like Wolf Warrior 2, with the same kind of non-stop action, and adding a Western star for additional international appeal. Except, it didn’t work. Tastes changed before its eventual release, and Cena made a big faux pas by having the temerity to refer to Taiwan as a country while doing promo work for another movie. This did not exactly endear John to Chinese authorities, who regard Taiwan as a rogue province, though his subsequent apology was likely even more cringe. In the end, this film seems to have been buried, its release getting very little promotion, though the movie did solid numbers on Netflix.
This takes place in Iraq, where security contractor “Dragon” Luo Feng (Chan) is escorting civilian workers from an oil refinery back to safety. However, ex-Marine Chris Van Horne (Cena) is tricked into attacking the convoy to benefit Owen Paddock (Asbæk), who wants to take the refinery over. On discovering the truth Chris and Dragon team up, to stop Paddock. The story is all as thoroughly generic as its title, and the film went through quite a few of the latter, including Ex-Baghdad, Project X, Project X-Traction, and SNAFU. None of which are much better. There’s also no connection to Chan’s earlier First Strike. The two things this has going for it are the leads, who try to bring a much-needed sense of fun to proceedings. Only occasionally do they succeed, e.g. Chan’s fight in a sea of foam, which feels like a throwback to his golden era.
There’s precious little sense of reality here, the entire production feeling like it was shot on green-screen. The backdrops are never even slightly convincing and Waugh shoots proceedings in a way bereft of any internal logic. For instance there’s a fight on a bus, where the camera is looking down on the participants from about 20 feet above. In reality, the bus’s roof would render this shot impossible. It feels less like a movie than a collection of cut scenes from a discount video-game. Initially, I wondered why Asbæk looked embarrassed to be there. By the end, however, I was feeling equally embarrassed for him, and anyone else involved in this sloppy and quarter-assed effort at international action cinema.