A Watery Grave
Asia’s Michael Bay Dante Lam swings and misses on his third ‘Operation’ despite some high grade military porn.
Operation Hadal
Director: Dante Lam • Writer: Zhi Yaqing
Starring: Zhang Hanyu, Huang Xuan, Wang Junkai, Yu Shi, Duan Yihong, Du Jiang
China • 2hrs 10mins
Opens Hong Kong September 11 • IIB
Grade: D
Man, oh man, are we a long way from Beast Cops.
I say that because after watching, or I should say enduring, Dante Lam Chiu-yin’s Operation Hadal | 蛟龍行動, the latest in Lam’s bonkers series of actioners in which the Chinese military saves the world – after Operation Mekong and Operation Red Sea – the first reaction is likely going to be along the lines of “WTF did I just watch?” Because very little in the frantically cobbled together, thin yet somehow bloated Hadal makes a lick of sense. Oh, it makes “sense”: There’s a white guy with a secret Moon Base on the ocean floor (don’t ask) who’s threatening to blow shit up so the world will take the State of Siekerman (I shit you not) seriously, and the crack Sea Dragons are tasked with stopping him. Easy. But the road to gunfire and derring-do is fraught with … challenges that can only be solved by whip pans and fiery explosions. It’s exhausting, messy, and doesn’t come close to the Bayhem-style lunatic, military porn entertainment of Mekong or Red Sea. Some of the cast and characters from the first two films are back; honestly, though, I can’t recall which ones, everyone’s so anonymously bland – cast and characters. Lam and writer Zhi Yaqing (who co-wrote Lam’s Eddie Peng-starring coast guard actioner The Rescue) make sure any moral nuance or personal dilemmas are stripped from Operation Hadal in order to keep the focus resolutely on the military heroics. Like I said. A long way from Beast Cops.
Worst skipper ever
The boring, rote adventure starts with a bunch of White Guys sneaking onto a Chinese oil rig via submersible with the intention of stealing codes for… something. Or maybe it’s a weapon. There’s a firefight, the Sea Dragons use – again, I shit you not – jetpacks to fly onto the rig and chase the mercenary dudes away. The Chinese navy re-secures the platform, but little does it realise this was just the first salvo in the Siekerman (jezuz!) conspiracy to take over the aforementioned underwater Moon Base and its sister… Solar? Star? Saturn? I forget, base and steal the nuclear missiles they store. I think. Or maybe use that weapon they stole. The navy, represented by chief Fang Yi (Duan Yihong) drags its worst submarine captain, Zhao Qihang (Zhang Hanyu), out of semi-retirement and puts him in charge of the Longjing to go find the White Guys on their secret sub, Abyss, commanded by Admiral Walter (Bryan Larkin, who hilariously played “Abdullah” in The Point Men), which is running around in a deep sea trench, being chased by the Phantom – not Siekerman but never IDed by flag – under the command of Captain George. Again, I think.
Stuck in this muck are a gifted but unsure, magic-eared sonar specialist, Cao (pop star Wang Junkai); veteran Sea Dragons Xu (Du Jiang) and Luo (Wang Yanlin); the guilt-wracked Meng (Huang Xuan, Moscow Mission), who let someone on his squad die in an earlier mission; new squad member Han Xiao (Yu Shi, Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force); and Fang, AKA The Girl (Jiang Luxia).
Straight up, Lam just can’t marry the spectacle with the narrative this time around, mostly because there isn’t a coherent one; Operation Hadal is all but incomprehensible at times. Most of the time. Actually starting at about 20 minutes in, even with the on-screen names and titles. The Sea Dragons are indistinguishable from each other physically (thanks to the abundance of gear) and aside from one guy with a chip on his should about a dead brother or father or some such cliché they have no individual personalities. Lam has been playing in China’s big budgets, major resources playground for a while now, on this trilogy and in the rousing Korean War drama with no Koreans, The Battle of Lake Changjin, and he’s proved he is indeed Asia’s Michael Bay. He’s good at this – usually. This time around though he’s let down by busted CGI, a glut of techy toys that overwhelm the story, and a simple onslaught of stupid. How are these subs all so fuckin’ huge? Any Hongkonger would kill for that much space in their home. Does everything need to flash and clang and ring? And seriously, jetpacks? Even as a naval recruitment video Operation Hadal misses the mark if grosses in the normally lucrative mainland are to be believed.
Dive, Dive, Dive
So many submarine movies, so little time.
Das Boot, d: Wolfgang Petersen (1981)
Duh, the mother of all submarine movies. In any version Petersen’s epic, claustrophobic, West German (!) war thriller is one of the GOATs.
Below, d: David Twohy (2002)
Darren Aronofsky (!) wrote this supernatural sub shocker with a stacked cast. A WWII patrol and a U-boat tussle – and then it all goes very wrong.
Crimson Tide, d: Tony Scott (1995)
A close second to Das Boot. Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman get into a power struggle over the right-or-wrong of a nuclear first strike.