Wu Jing's Wolf Warrior II was made with the aim of being bigger, badder, and better than it's predecessor. For what it is, it's essentially Chinese Rambo combined with elements of John Wick. The film's action is... fine for the most part, and the story is absolutely terrible. Like it's bad. The worst thing about Wolf Warrior II is that it simply cannot escape its almost cartoony CGI, despite having a 30M USD budget it looks like it was made with a budged of 300k USD. The characters aren't great either, with Leng Feng (played by Wu Jing) of course being a generic action hero.
This movie is very staunch in it's chest-beating, Han Chinese nationalist message, to the point that the main bad guys are Western mercenaries. You can tell the CCP had a hand in this movie, too. There's certain scenes that genuinely feel as though they're promoting the Chinese military, the CCP and their ideology. Like, in the film's climax, a force of tanks, spearheaded by the mercenaries, gets completely wiped out by the Chinese Navy, leaving the Chinese hero, Leng, to face off against the big boss bad guy, played by Frank Grillo.
So yeah, not a good movie, and it's definitely a blatant-as-all-heck propaganda piece. But overall it's become kind of an odd guilty pleasure of mine. Overall, definitely worth a watch if you're in the mood for a Chinese John Wick/Rambo-esque film without Keanu or Stallone's talents or charms, or just a B-rated action movie that stands out from other works of Chinese cinema.
Fin.
This movie is very staunch in it's chest-beating, Han Chinese nationalist message, to the point that the main bad guys are Western mercenaries. You can tell the CCP had a hand in this movie, too. There's certain scenes that genuinely feel as though they're promoting the Chinese military, the CCP and their ideology. Like, in the film's climax, a force of tanks, spearheaded by the mercenaries, gets completely wiped out by the Chinese Navy, leaving the Chinese hero, Leng, to face off against the big boss bad guy, played by Frank Grillo.
So yeah, not a good movie, and it's definitely a blatant-as-all-heck propaganda piece. But overall it's become kind of an odd guilty pleasure of mine. Overall, definitely worth a watch if you're in the mood for a Chinese John Wick/Rambo-esque film without Keanu or Stallone's talents or charms, or just a B-rated action movie that stands out from other works of Chinese cinema.
Fin.