Hidden Strike (2018/2023)

Hidden Strike (2018/2023)
Aka: SNAFU; Project X-traction; Ex-Baghdad

 

Starring: Jackie Chan, John Cena, Ma Chunrui, Jiang Wenli, Xu Jia, Gong Jun, Rima Zeidan, Hou Minghao, Pilou Asbæk, Amadeus Serafini, Tim Man
Director: Scott Waugh
Action Director: Jackie Chan’s Stuntman Association, Bruce Law

 

This movie will be an interesting footnote in Jackie Chan’s career as the movie that took five years to see release, yet cost a hefty (by Chinese standards) 80 million dollars to produce. It was announced in mid-2017 as a collaboration between Jackie Chan and long-time friend Sylvester Stallone under the title Ex-Baghdad. The plot synopsis, which is essentially what we got in the end, was:

 

"When a China-run oil refinery is attacked in Mosul, Iraq, a Chinese private security contractor (Chan) is called in to extract the oil workers. He learns, however, that the attackers’ real plan is to steal a fortune in oil, and teams up with an American former Marine (Stallone) to stop them."

The director was announced to be Scott Waugh, who had previously directed Act of Valor and Need for Speed. He went on to direct Expend4bles, which also came out this year. Within a few months, it was announced that Stallone was no longer going to be in the film, him citing schedule conflicts with Creed 2. Nonetheless, the film was said to still be “in development.”

It took a year, but news finally broke in June 2018 that the movie was going to start production. Stallone would be replaced with actor-wrestler John Cena (The Marine and 12 Rounds). The title of the film changed to Project X, which I was skeptical about, considering that we already had three movies with that title, including a then-recent comedy about the house party to end all house parties. Filming had begun in August, with Inner Mongolia doubling for the Middle East. The official title was now Project X-traction (a slight improvement, and the title that Brazil maintained until today).

We may assume that by 2019, the film had finished production. Strangely enough, however, news of the production (and its release) went dead around May of that year. It wasn’t until 2021 that official images of the film were released. By that time, John Cena was showing up in the Fast/Furious franchise and pissing off China for referring to Taiwan as a country, while the ever-productive Chan had released no fewer than eight movies in that interval. Moreover, the English title of the film was changed to SNAFU, military jargon means “Situation Normal All F*cked Up.”

So what held the movie up? Well, initially, part of the reason can be traced back to COVID-19, which took the world by storm in 2020. By the time that quarantines and lockdowns were starting to be lifted, Chinese audience tastes were shifting in favor of local blockbusters, thus years of trying to pander to Chinese censors and audiences were swiftly going down the drain. So, nobody knew how an American-Chinese co-production would fare in this environment. This was compounded by the backlash about Cena and Taiwan, which caused further worry about how to market the film in China. It took another two years for the film to finally see release, where it went straight to Netflix in most Western countries under the new (and generic) title Hidden Strike.

The film is set in generic Middle-Eastern-stan, where a Chinese company runs a huge oil extraction and refinery outfit. We learn via the Plot Point Specific Radio Bulletin that different factions in said country have been fighting each other over oil rights, with the Chinese company getting caught in the middle. The fighting has gotten so bad that the Chinese government has sent a crack team of operatives, led by Dragon Luo (Jackie Chan), to extract all the Chinese nationals and whisk them away to safety.

Meanwhile, a former Marine-turned-mercenary, Chris (John Cena), is hanging out in some village, playing with the kids and befriending the locals. His brother, Henry (Amadeus Serafini), asks him to participate in a raid on the Chinese convoy in order to capture a wanted criminal among the fleeing nationals. Chris initially turns down the offer, but relents when he discovers that the village he lives in is not only out of water, but it will cost a cool hundred grand to get the equipment necessary to pump out water from deeper in the ground.

Chris, Henry, and the latter’s team use a special jet engine (?) to engineer a manmade sandstorm (??), during which they launch their raid on the convoy. Only two buses are hit, one that will serve as a decoy and another one housing a certain Dr. Cheng (Jiang Wenli, of Farewell, My Concubine and The Master ’15) and her entourage. They are kidnapped and taken to a “graveyard” of giant satellite dishes, where Chris learns the identity of his employer: Owen (Danish actor Pilou Asbæk). Owen is an employee of Unicorp, another company that has been extracting petroleum in the region. He has kidnapped Dr. Cheng in order to get the information from her in order to get the Chinese refinery back online, so he can steal the oil and make a fortune for himself.

Chris didn’t sign up for a kidnapping, however, so he’s out. But once he discovers that Owen has murdered Henry behind his back, he wants revenge. Meanwhile, Dragon Luo had been trying to find the attackers after leaving the sandstorm, even going so far as to trade firepower with them. The resulting firefight resulted in the death of some of his men, so he wants to find out who’s responsible. This leads him to Chris, which will ultimately result in an uneasy team-up with the men. Also, tagging along for the ride is the oil refinery’s head geologist, Mei (Ma Chunrui, of Fate of Swordsman), who happens to be Dragon Luo’s estranged daughter.

It's pretty straight-forward stuff, with the main plot hole being that there’s a traitor among the Chinese oil refinery employees who rats out on which bus Dr. Cheng is riding, but then is more or less ignored for the rest of the movie. I was curious to find out how that would solve itself, but in the end, it goes completely unaddressed. Bad writing there, folks. Everything else checks out, I guess. There isn’t a lot of background on Unicorp, the company the villain is said to work for. I think it’s a competing petroleum company, or at least a company that supplies oil extraction equipment to the region. All I know is that the villain, Owen, is one of those disgruntled “I do all the work and see none of the profits while the fat cats live in splendor” types.

Jackie Chan is playing Jackie Chan. Serious when he needs to be, but always with his trademark charisma and physical humor, even when he’s not fighting or firing guns. John Cena’s character is the “mercenary with a heart of gold, but with a past.” He stays in the village where he was supposed to carry out a job, which job cost him the life of his dad. He’s a good man who is driven to extremes by a need to help those he cares for, in this case, the inhabitants of the village torn apart by years of conflict. He does start falling for Mei, whom he describes as having a nice booty[1].

That said, the other characters are mainly one-dimensional. Jackie Chan has often tried to play the role of “leader of a competent team of action people” in his later movies, like this, Vanguard and CZ12. I understand that he’s getting old and needs to find someone to fill his shoes. But he never seems to find anyone that is equally charismatic, or a writer who can write these youngsters as such. So, he often shines above them while they fade into the background. Case in point, Dragon Luo’s team more or less disappears from the film following the bus convoy sequence. Once again, there is no “new Jackie Chan” promised in this.

The action, as expected, was staged by Jackie Chan’s Stuntman Association, with Bruce Law on hand to help with the car stunts. The action varies from gunplay to vehicular mayhem to fisticuffs and, of course, lots and lots of explosions. The assault on the bus convoy reminded me of Mad Max: Fury Road, with mercenaries in dune buggies shooting grappling hooks into buses and whatnot…in the middle of a sandstorm. Talented B-movie fight choreographer Tim Man (Triple Threat; Ninja: Shadow of a Tear) gets to play one of the mercenaries and he gets to spar with Taiwanese actress Rima Zeidan during this set piece. There is lots of Ryuhei Kitamura-esque spinning camerawork during their short scuffle.

The first showstopper is the inevitable fight between Cena and Chan, which has the two throwing down at the satellite base before joining forces. Cena fights mainly by throwing Chan around or throwing oil drums at him, while Chan uses wire-assisted acrobatics against Cena. I’m not one of the people who complain about Chan using more wires as he gets older. I mean, you can only break your bones for our entertainment for so long before you need to rely more on that sort of assistance. Considering that Chan was 64 when production started, that’s fine by me. He can still throw a good kick, tumble and twirl a prop around during a comedic fight, but we can’t reasonably expect even a New Police Story performance out of him now, let alone an old Police Story performance. It is interesting to see Chan using more knife and ground fighting than he used to, especially considering his criticism of MMA during the 2000s.

There are some more martial arts when the two team up to fight some mercenaries raiding the village. There is some physical humor between the two leads involving hand signals, while Cena establishes himself as the strong man who will pull or shove his opponents through walls. Things get a bit more intense at the finale, which has Jackie Chan fighting machete-wielding guys in masks—I assume it’s Chinese stuntmen playing Arab henchmen—while balancing on pipes. The showstopper is the big fight between Chan and Tim Man. This should be a fight for the ages, considering that one was one of the best choreographers and screen fighters of all time while the other fits the bill for the last decade or so. Man does show off some impressive kicks, especially while the two are fighting in the computer room. However, it eventually gets bogged down in a gimmick fight involving bungee cords and a room full of soap suds. It’s still a creative fight, but I think all of us expected more unadulterated fisticuffs from the two. The movie then ends on a series of car chases and vehicular mayhem, not unlike Mr. Nice Guy and The Accidental Spy.

A lot of fans are dismissing this film as crap, and I can understand. It’s watchable and moves at a fast clip. Chan is as likable as he usually is, even if his trademark action style is watered down by wires and his advancing age. I personally still enjoy watching it. I watched this with my father-in-law and he liked a lot, so it does have an audience somewhere. It’s just no Operation Condor.

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[1] - The strangest part in the entire film comes during the outtakes, when we get to see Cena’s Chris talking about how he’d like to perform anallingus on Ma Chunrui’s character, and even “reverse motorboat” her. Was that in the original dialog? Or was it ad-libbed by Cena and then cut?