It was with considerable anticipation that I approached this third installment in director Dante Lam’s tenuously linked “Operation” series. The first film, Operation Mekong, pitted the Chinese police against ruthless drug smugglers, while the follow-up, Operation Red Sea was about an elite Navy squad taking on terrorists in order to rescue Chinese dignitaries. Like Sergio Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy, the connecting threads between them were largely aesthetic. The stories and characters were different, but in terms of style, pacing, some of the same actors and gobs of bloody, bonkers violence…yeah, this was a franchise, and a damned entertaining one (especially Operation Red Sea, one of 2018’s best action films).
Unfortunately, the third time is not a charm. Despite boasting many of the same elements (and returning actors) as the first two films, Operation Hadal is a crushing disappointment...and sometimes unintentionally funny.
Gosh, where to start. How about the most obvious one…the characters. I’ll be the first to concede that characterization was never a high priority in this franchise, but here, it’s nearly non-existent. What we mostly learn about the major players are their names and titles. Beyond that, they’re either talking heads or defined by action. There’s almost no middle ground. But that’s arguably the least of the movie’s problems…
The other two films may not have always smacked of realism, but were at least grounded enough to seem plausible. Conversely, Operation Hadal dives head-first into sci-fi territory with an outlandish plot that evokes some of the more ridiculous, Roger Moore-era Bond films…with a bit of The Hunt for Red October thrown in. The Chinese Navy becomes engaged in a game of cat and mouse between their submarines and those from the fictional country, the State of Siekerman (presumably Americans), who plan to detonate a powerful nuke capable of triggering underwater volcanoes, resulting in earthquakes and tsunamis that’ll wipe out most of Asia.
 |
| Well, this guy certainly missed the boat. |
Even forgetting the ludicrous sci-fi aspects of the film, the narrative is a baffling mess, so convoluted that there are numerous points where the viewer isn’t exactly sure what’s going on, compounded by an overall lack of visual distinction among the various underwater locations. Most of the time, we’re only aware of where an action scene is going down because a title card tells us so.
And speaking of action, there’s enough for two or three movies…guns, fists, knives, blood, destruction, explosions, all powered by a perpetually moving camera and marginally convincing CGI. But right from the get-go, it’s so relentless, hyper-edited and repetitive that the effect is ultimately numbing (especially with that deadly running time). Even a cinematic chest-thumper like Michael Bay sometimes knows when to slow things down to let a movie breathe.
Those who get their kicks watching someone else play a video game might find Operation Hadal fairly amusing. For others, especially those of us who enjoyed Dante Lam’s first two “Operation” films, this one is a soulless, dramatically anemic letdown.
EXTRA KIBBLES
MAKING-OF FEATURETTE
TRAILER
No comments:
Post a Comment