Operation Hadal / 蛟龍行動 - Movie Review

The Movie: Operation Hadal / 蛟龍行動

The Director: Dante Lam

The Cast: Huang Xuan, Yu Shi, Zhang Hanyu, Duan Yihong, Wang Junkai, Du Jiang, Li Chen

The Story: The offshore platform Deep Blue 3 in Chinese territorial water has been occupied by mercenaries. The Chinese Navy sets sail to repel invaders.

The Rating: 6 / 10

The Review:

If you're looking for movies that are ultra patriotic, flag waving, marketing machines that depict the Chinese military as the ultimate heroes against global forces of evil, then director Dante lam is your guy. Two of his previous movies, 2018's Operation Red Sea and 2016's Operation Mekong are two shining examples of this and also just happen to be really great action spectacles so I was very hopeful that this new Operation would fit right in with those two.

While the story is entertaining and it comes with all the expected bells and whistles, I think that creating a movie about battles taking place underwater in submarines is a very difficult thing to get right. There's literally not much room to move and everything is so physically contained that the filmmakers need to rely very heavily on tension and drama between opposing forces that, for most of the movie, never actually see each other face to face and this, unfortunately is where the movie falls short.

There's a brotherly backstory that's in place as the dramatic centerpiece as well as several other plot threads all meant to provide appropriate levels of drama but, for me, none of them really hit home and I was left with a bit of a disconnect when it comes to the characters in the story. A lot of the character development felt very rushed or glossed over in an effort to fit everything into a lengthy run time that reaches almost two and a half hours. This was definitely a case of trying to do too much and there needed to be a better balance of drama and action for the story to not get torpedoed to the bottom of the ocean.

When soldiers do come face to face with their enemies, the action kicks into high gear and we get lots of great fight scenes and explosions which is always fun. There's even a near indestructible robot dog that shoots little rockets at everyone although that made me wonder how good of an idea that was to let loose inside an underwater base. It was also confusing at times to keep track of battles that were taking place inside multiple locations because everything looked the same and there was little to effort made to give the audience any sense of place or direction.

I was really hoping that this movie would match the heights of the director's previous "Operation" films, but it ultimately sinks under the weight and pressure of those lofty expectations. As propaganda for the Chinese military, it is pretty effective although once you start looking beneath the surface, the whole thing just begins to sink.

Thank you for reading this review, please also check out my reviews for Dante Lam's other movies Operation Mekong and Operation Red Sea, and you can check out the films themselves currently on Amazon's Prime Video streaming service.