Wolf Warrior 2 (2017)

I'm Chinese!I'm Chinese!I'm Chinese!I'm Chinese!I'm Chinese! I'm Chinese!

It amazes me that so many people are criticizing the "politics" of this movie -- this is basically a Chinese version of Rambo. We have essentially the same setup -- hero tortured by his past, but trained to be a killing machine, wants to be left in peace but, damnit, people need him to protect them from the bad guys. Which he goes about doing with crazy efficiency...So how well does it work? The action is somewhat more amateurish than in a big-budget US movie, though some might consider that a stylistic choice. It's very much in the martial arts tradition of one guy defeating an army because they have the courtesy to only shoot at him one at a time. It's certainly not a mind-stretcher.On the other hand if you're watching (like I was) to get your heart racing while you exercise, it's just the ticket, with excitement for pretty much 90% of the screen time.

Stories is still one of those mindless one man action flicks, but the sidekicks this time around are more entertaining, almost managing to upgrade this to a three man army. Other improvements include way better shots of action scenes (some of them really made me go 'wow!' for a moment), and no more horribly bad CGI wolves.Where they can still do better: dramatic flashbacks. Rather than serving to strengthen the emotional side of the plot, it undercuts the build up of tension in various scenes. Timing of those scenes was just not good.Good for a lazy Friday night; quite a bit better than its predecessor!

The 4-star rating is purely for the action scenes, which are way over the top but is what keeps the movie afloat. Apart from that, this is just China Propaganda masquerading as an action movie.First off, China doing humanitarian aid out of generosity, without an agenda, is fiction. The whole China culture, historically, and persisting until today, is always about what actions benefit themselves. The naive may think China is generous with so-called investments to developing nations like African countries, but the underlying motive is to create jobs for Chinese workers who would revolt against the government as the domestic economy is slowing down over time.Now that we understand the agenda of this movie, let's talk about entertainment value. The action scenes are quite well choreographed, with generally coordinated martial arts fights which are nothing new if you have watched many other Chinese-language movies. So are the explosions and dramatics which we have seen so often in Hollywood movies. With regards to the story, acting and script, these are the movie's weakest points. When you have one egotistical person with money to spend, writing, directing and acting without much high caliber professional supervision, you get a movie like Wolf Warrior 2. This is a movie that is a B- at best, and the box office success in terms of gross is misleading given the size of China's population to whom these types of propaganda movies are targeted. The rest of us, we see it as what it is. A mediocre attempt at showing China's rising influence through monetary means, but very little through sincere generosity. That is why Wolf Warrior 2 lacks foundation because the basis of China helping others is only fiction.