Another Unnecessary Action Film
t’s seems like every action film star eventually ends up starring in low budget titles that nobody cares for. ‘Hidden Strike’ is one of those – an extremely bland and uninspired film. Honestly, the painfully generic title says it all. The plot doesn’t make sense, action scenes are sparse and nothing to wright home about, actors’ work... is there I guess. Yeah, Jackie Chan and John Cena are charismatic… individuals but that’s not enough to make it at least entertaining. Props to Jackie for being way more fit in his late sixties than me in my early thirties, but his age shows nonetheless.
The plot goes as follows: some mercenary group is to capture a Chinese oil refinery in Iraq and steal the oil via secretly constructed pipes. A PMC lead by Jackie Chan is to evacuate the oil rig personal, and it could have ended right here, but bad boys need a USB dongle and a 4 digit password to operate the refinery (sure it works exactly like that in real life) so they kidnap high ranked workers. Of course Jackie’s task is to save them. Oh, by the way, his daughter works as an engineer there too, because of course she does. John Cena is on the mercenaries side at first, but then they kill his brother for absolutely no reason, so he joins the Jackie’s quest for silly gags and pathetic kung fu action scenes. It couldn't have been more clichéd...
Yeah, I guess it’s not the worst film in the world, but there’s literally nothing good about it. CGI looks cheap and unnecessary, fight scenes are sloppy and boring, locations, costumes and props look artificial and out of place. I’m not sure how much of the scenes were green screened entirely, but it feels like almost all of them were. The very final part was somewhat entertaining, but mostly because of being cheesy. A ‘climactic’ toy truck chase with big booms. I’d say stay away from this film. It’s so mediocre it’s not worth anyone’s time.
