Director: Dante Lam
Year: 2026
Country: China
Alternate Titles: Jiao Long Xing Dong; Operation Leviathan
Genre: Action
Plot:
Following a training mission, an elite military unit is pressed into service to investigate the reports about a special advanced class of nuclear submarine threatening to destroy the southern coast of China. Realizing that the sub has been stolen by a Rogue commander looking to instill chaos in the area, the authorities in charge decide to put a special Sea Dragon squadron of Marines in charge of protecting the citizens and stopping the situation from escalating.
Review:
Overall, this was a rather fun and likable genre outing. Among the more intriguing aspects here is the immensely thrilling setup that provides this with the kind of constant hard-hitting action necessary to move the story along. With the early setup to demonstrate their capabilities as a training exercise shows off the skills of the sub in that kind of combat scenario that the training has been preparing them for, as it turns out their being trained to take over a sub from a rogue commander looking to instill terror in Chinese waters. That gives this a lot to like in terms of setting up the film in a solid structure, where the first half presents us with the full extent of their training capabilities in the form of several exercise and info dumps about what the technology is worth, while the second half banks on the capture of the sub and the race to understand what's going on while the finale looks to stop it from happening, which is a solid and generally serviceable storyline that keeps this one going along.
On top of that, the usual series of explosive high-energy action scenes throughout here keep this one excessively enjoyable throughout here. With the opening shots of the team undergoing training scenarios on an oil platform or the field course that mix gun-fu moments as well as tactical hand-to-hand or weaponry fighting exercises, it gets this going on a strong note to prepare for the second half as an equal mix of similar tactical military action with coordinated submarine maneuvers as they hunt down their targets. This is handled incredibly well, showcasing the various measures possible to track and destroy each other through the water, as the different techniques to push the sub along to safety or detect the measures needed to find them are a fine way to go about doing this type of operation, while the explosive finale gives this plenty of explosive techniques and heroics to pull off everything in grand fashion, all of which giving this one quite a lot to like.
There isn't much to dislike here, but it does suffer from some minor issues. The biggest drawback to the film is the somewhat repetitive and formulaic final act, where it tends to fall on repeated tactics and tropes that might be realistic to how it all actually operates, but manages to drag the running time out considerably. Far too much of this section is reliant on watching the crews of the various subs sit in their respective situation rooms barking orders at underlings while the ships sustain damage from their blows, resulting in the whole crew shaking violently or sparking equipment failures being spotted around everyone. That becomes a bit tiresome after a while when it continually repeats without much deviation, and while some of it does deviate for military action or rescue operations, far too little of that occurs to break up the running time, which makes this longer than it needs to be. As well as some questionable CGI that helps to enhance the action but looks quite obvious at times, these all manage to bring this down.
Overview: ****.5/5
An immensely likable and enjoyable genre effort, this one has plenty of enjoyable factors to keep it going rather nicely while having just enough drawbacks to just bring it down slightly. Those with an appreciation for this kind of genre fare, who are curious about it, or who are fans of the creative crew, will have a lot to like here while most others out there should heed caution.
Comments
Post a Comment